January 1986

FULFILLED Remembering in Luther King

January 1986

SPAN 2

A Dream Fulfilled

9

Government by the People

by James ldema

14

Laying a Foundation

by Gwenneth Rae

19

On the Lighter Side

20

Moon Base Springboard to the Universe

by Jim Schefter

26

Aawara Goes to New York

28

Computers The Next Frontiers

33 A Friend of the Mysore Zoo

by Rugmani Menon

37

Indian Animals in Washington

38 Focus On ...

40 Wired

42 Democracy in America by v.S. Maniam

45 An Unknown Indian Discovers an Unknown American

Publisher Editor

James A. McGinley Warren W. McCurdy

Managing Editor

Himadri Dhanda

Assistant Managing Editor

Krishan Gabrani

Senior Editor

Aruna Dasgupta

Copy Editor

Nirmal Sharma

Editorial Assistant Photo Editor

Rocque Fernandes Avinash Pasricha

Photographs: Inside front cover-Alexander O. Boulton. 2, 3 top left-Richard Saunders; right-U.S. Postal Service. 4 top-UPI/ Bettmann Newsphotos; 4 bottom, 5 top-UPJ. 7 top left-J.D. Beri.

9-13-Kevin Horan. 14-T.S. Satyan, courtesy Ford Foundation. 15 top-K.A. Srinivasan; center, bottom-Avinash Pasricha. 16-Amar Talwar, courtesy Ford Foundation. 17-Avinash Pasricha. 21-25NASA. 26 left, 27 bottom-courtesy Raj Kapoor; 27 top-courtesy Chidananda Das Gupta. 28 left top-Hank Morgan/Rainbow; left bottom-Rick Friedman 1985; right top to bottom-Liane Enkelis 1985; Ed Kashi; Christopher Springmann; Dan McCoy/Rainbow. 30Andrew Sacks. 33-35-K. Ponnappa Subbaiah. 36-37-Barry Fitzgerald. 38 top left-courtesy The Asia Society; center-courtesy The Cleveland Museum of Art; 38 bottom left, 39 top and center left-Carol Hightower; 39 right-Š Pepita Noble 1'J85; bottom-courtesy Library of Congress. 41-Philip-Lorca diCorcia. 45~Back cover-Sudhir VaikkattiJ.

Published by the United States Information Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi llOOOI, on behalf of the American Embassy. New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this maga¡ zine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana.

Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged. except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine. one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs.25; single copy. Rs. 4. For change of address send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to Circulation Manager. SPAN magazine. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. See change of address form on page 48b.

Front cover: In tribute to a man who "changed America forever," every January Americans will henceforth celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday. See also page 2.

Back cover: A painting

by Harold Shapinsky - who toiled unknown in his New York studio for 40 years before an Indian teacher, Akumal Ramachander, revealed his mastery to the world. See also page 45.

The year was 1963. Never before had Washington, D.C., witnessed such a spectacle.

More than 200,000 persons, black and white, had assembled from nearly every state of the Union. Ignoring the midsummer heat, the crowd enthusiastically greeted the words of a young, dark-skinned minister as he stood before the statue of Abraham Lincoln.

"I have a dream," he said, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day •••sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood ••••I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character ••••" The speaker was Martin Luther King, Jr., exhorting his nation to finish the work Lincoln had begun when he freed black slaves a century before. Today, 18 years after his assassination, King and his dream are honored as only two other Americans (Washington and Lincoln) have ever been, with a national holiday reminding citizens annually of the rich legacy of this man of peace and goodwill. In this issue, SPAN is proud to present an article on Dr. King by Nissim Ezekiel, a well-known Indian poet/writer who has edited a book of King's oratory, A Martin Luther King Reader, and considers him "one of the sublimest public figures of our time."

"It is almost irrpossible to get a plane ticket to India from America these days," said Ted Tanen, who flies the route regularly. "This augurs well for India in several respects: many more visitors from the United States; new business possibilities, specially in technology; and more exchanges than ever before, mainly in the sciences.

These are going to be the new manifestations of the real meaning of the Festival of India. It's already beginning to happen in a big way."

As executive director of the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and Culture for the last seven years, Tanen was in on the planning of the Festival, and has kept his finger on its pulse since the opening last June by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. While in Delhi the week before Christmas to finalize preparations for the Subcommission's annual meeting in March, he took time from his busy schedule to give SPAN his impressions of the first six months of the Festival and what the prospects appear to be for the future. Here is a summary: Festival events, by the time they conclude, will have comprised more than 500 programs, held in over 100 cities in well over 40 states. No one can have an exact count because, for every program organized by the Subcommission, there are 10 or 20 organized spontaneously by Indian and American communities, businesses or private universities. The United States has been an active partner, bearing more than 65 percent of the costs of bringing the Indian exhibits and participants to America.

Audiences represent every part of American society. Typical was a midwestern family who saw the Aditi exhibit in Washington, D.C.; all five signed a letter saying that this was the most marvelous experience of their lives. An estimate of how many Americans the combined exhibits have touched so far indlcated a figure of 530 million people. Since the population of the United States is only 250 million, this must mean that the equivalent of every man, woman and child has been involved in more than two events. "Show me another country," said Tanen, "that has had this sort of positive publicity in five or six months!"

Last November, Tanen revealed, Bergdorf-Goodrnan, one of the most elegant stores in New York City, had a special pre-Christmas sale of Indian clothing and art Objects which was so popular that everything sold out before the sale Officially opened; the owners are now considering having the sale as an annual Christmas event. Beginning in March every Bloomingdale department store in America will be featuring products from India. This means that whole new markets are opening up to India. In addition to the retail clothing market, there are indications that many .more businesses are interested in working with India in collaborative projects in scienc~ and technology and in the oil industry. "Remember," added Tanen, "that before the Festival started, the United States was already India's biggest trading partner. What will it be now?!"

--J .A.M.

Black seamstress Rosa Parks' insistence on sitting in the for-whites-only front section of a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and her subsequent arrest, gave a new momentum to the civil rights' .. movement-and led to the emergence of a new black leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. Left, a year after her arrest, Mrs. Parks sits in the front of a city bus following the historic Supreme Court ruling banning segregation on the city's public transit vehicles.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King led the largest-ever civil rights demonstration in the United States. His peaceful March on Washington (below) culminated at the Lincoln Memorial (right), where 200,000 Americans of all races heard his famous speech: "1have a dream that this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed... that all men are created equal. "

n his well-known speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for civil rights, Martin Luther King, J r., claimed that his dream for the future was "deeply rooted in the American Dream." He had faith in the prospect of his nation living out "the true meaning of its creed ... that all men are created equal."

Today, less than a quarter century later, America has taken a significant symbolic step toward the realization of that dream.

It has honored King's memory with an annual national holiday, the first of which will be celebrated this year on January 20.

Only Jesus Christ, Christopher Columbus, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have been so honored.

A symbolic step is significant only if it expresses the will to move more speedily in the historically indicated direction. It is not a substitute for that movement, but its value is very great.

The black struggle is now identified with the national and international struggle for human rights and racial acceptance.

Since King's assassination on April 4; 1968, at age 39, the American people have traveled a long distance in understanding his contribution, not only to desegregation and allied causes but also to their cultural and spiritual evolution.

Failures and setbacks in racial equality are known to occur in American society, and are widely reported. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in 1964, King reasserted his "abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind." He was aware, he said, that appeals for brotherhood

were often "answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs, and even death." All the same, he rejected the view that mankind is "tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism .... " We who are still fated, more than 20 years later, to acknowledge the evidence of racism (without finding its midnight starless), can do no less. Acceptance of the allegedly tragic view would be a betrayal of human solidarity as an ultimate human ideal.

There may be differences with King about nonviolence, as there are with Mahatma Gandhi, whose theory and the practice of it greatly affected King. Both believed in it as a moral force that can transform individuals and society. Both freed the concept from passivity and associated it with love, peace and harmony.

How do we overcome oppression and violence "without resorting to violence and oppression?"

Gandhi and King often went to extremes in considering nonviol"ence an answer to all the major problems of our time. King once wrote that "even very violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if the movement is moving, if they can act constructively." ("Nonviolence and Social Change," The Trumpet of Conscience, Harper & Row, New York, 1968.)

We know the options available to violent temperaments, and the overwhelming likelihood of one of those options being chosen in preference to nonviolent discipline. King strengthened .his case by insisting on more than propaganda for and promotion of nonviolence as an idea. That, too, was important, but more important was a strategy of organized action. The aim

was not a new law, but "a massive, new national program." This was to include a "serious economic attack on slums and unemployment .... " As an inspired and zealous organizer, a man with a mission related, for him, to the destiny of mankind, King kept his promises. He was never satisfied with words, with policy formulations, with appeals and criticism.

Kirig's widow, Coretta, remarks in the book on her life with him (My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr. ,Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., New York, 1969) how curious it is that "in so rich a language as English there is only one word for all the different kinds of love." She mentions the three Greek words to which Martin often referred, eros, philia and agape. The first means the soui's yearning for the divine and is now interpreted as aesthetic or romantic love. The second is restricted to¡ reciprocal love ("No one could be sJch a fool," King said, "as to expect a person to feel that kind of love for his oppressor").

The third is disinterested love, not for one's own good but for the good of one's neighbor, not weak or passive, but love in action.

Coretta comments: "It was the kind of love Martin aspired to give his enemies. If, because of the defect in the English language, he sometimes sounded mild, just remember that his was a militant life and a militant love."

King has elaborated the agape theme in his intellectually autobiographical "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" (Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Harper & Row, New York, 1958). Ultimately, he gives the Greek word and idea a Christian slant as he did to his entire credo, whatever the sources from which he borrowed in creating it. He quotes Gandhi often, and shaped his modes of thinking and action in accordance with Gandhi's basic stances. Eventually, however, it is the Cross that is "the eternal expression of the length to which God will go in order to restore a broken community." King's Christianity is always restored to the center of his creed from where it is only temporarily displaced in his life by his theological and philosophical studies.

King boldly faced the problems of communist ideology and politics from the Christian point of view. He felt the need to do so because of its "widespread influence" and as "the only serious rival to Christianity." He studies it seriously and comes to the conclusion that it is "fundamentally incompatible" with Christianity. It is philosophically materialistic and atheistic. It is "based on ethical relativism," which King finds repulsive, quoting Lenin, lest he be accused of unfairness in describing its championing of ignoble means for noble ends. "We must be ready," said Lenin, "to employ trickery, deceit, lawbreaking, withholding and concealing truth" ("How Should a Christian View Communism?", Strength to Love, Harper & Row, New York, 1963).

King rightly asserts that "Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values." Even non-Christians and others who may reject that system in many of its particulars are likely to agree with it in King's formulation: "Immoral means cannot bring moral ends, for the ends are pre-existent in the means."¡ Whatever the weaknesses of Christianity in its practice through history, it has eventually returned to the original spirit oti Christ's teachings.

King speaks in that spirit always. He is courageous in reminding the Church that it has "often lagged in its concern for social justice." Recognizing that communism, though it stands for justice in a classless society, has created in practice "new classes and a new lexicon of injustice," King admits honestly

that it has "a sense of purpose and destiny." In a memorable passage, he writes: "We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice and righteousness. After our condemnation of the philosophy of communism has been eloquently expressed, we must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, injustice and racial discrimination which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops."

It is not only on the racial, political and moral issues of our time that King is impressive. He also has much to say about the individual character and how it can be developed. Iii "Three Dimensions of a Complete Life" he deals with concern for one's own welfare and achievements, for the welfare of others and for '~that eternal Being who is the source and ground of all reality" (Strength to Love). It is characteristic of King that, in commenting on the third dimension, he is less worried about atheism than about those who "live as though there is no God." I am not concerned here with his arguments about the existence of God, but about his admirable attitude toward those who try to live in "a man-centered universe." He reminds them that in such a universe, "you can never see the me that makes me me, and I can never see the you that makes you you. That invisible something we call personality is beyond our physical gaze."

Left: King greets a blind girl who, after hearing him preach, wanted to touch him. Above: On behalf of her late husband, Mrs. Coretta King receives the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding from President Zakir Husain at a function in New Delhi in 1969. At right is Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Above, right: In 1969 India honored King with a postage stamp. Right: The Kings at a reception in his hometown, Atlanta, after he won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

The first two dimensions of a complete life transcend their separate and combined meanings only when they acquire a timeless context. King reminds us that, even though his motives are theological and ours mayor may not be, too many of us live with plans "that are big in quantity, but small in quality, plans that move on the horizontal plane of time rather than on the vertical plane of eternity." It is notable that King never argues in favor of the ascetic and the unworldly life. Concern for one's self and for one's mission in life releases creative powers that it is our duty to discover. After discovering what one is made for, "he should surrender all of the power in his being to the achievement of this."

I quote the rest of this splendid statement: "He should seek to do it so well that nobody could do it better. He should do it as if God Almighty called him at this particular moment of history for this reason. No one ever makes a great contribution to humanity without this majestic sense of purpose and this dogged determination. No one ever brings his potentiality into actuality without this powerful inner drive."

King describes this as the length of a man's life. And then there is the breadth.

To self-concern must be added other-concern.

We have to choose between altruism and selfishness, the one creative, the other destructive.

Interaction with other persons and interdependence are

essential for our peace of mind. No man can live alone.

No nation can live alone.

Remembering-his visit to India, King mentions not only the high and rewarding moments but also the depressing ones. The latter, inevitably, are associated with the poverty of India, the millions who go to bed hungry every night.

Can America remain unconcerned with their condition? No says King, emphatically No. America's destiny is linked to India's. He demands the use of American wealth for aiding the underdeveloped countries of the world. Referring to America's military bases, he pleads for "establishing bases of genuine concern agd understanding." .

King once mentioned his trials and sufferings, not out of a martyr complex but because of the influence they had on his thought. He had been imprisoned 12 times, his home bombed twice, he and his family received frequent threats of death, and he was once the victim of a near-fatal stabbing. He held that these events had taught him the "value of unmerited suffering."

He had found them "redemptive." To save himself from bitterness he had decided to treat his ordeals as opportunities to transform himself and to "heal the people involved." That kind of healing was at the heart of his philosophy. During the course of his action-oriented public career, he had seen many changes in America and in the world that alarmed him. He also saw some changes he found full of promise. Though he was critical

Such ~oral and spiritual lessons are never learnt by a whole of various contemporary thinkers and movements, he approved of their conviction about the need for ac~ion. He regarded that population demanding its human rights, nor are they learnt conviction as "their most creative collective insight." permanently.

Nevertheless, King's voice in defining those In his essay entitled "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," lessons will be heard again and again in the years to come.

King attains the heights of sublimity. The toughness is needed Those who listen to it and spread its message will be for realism and decisiveness, for breaking with superstitions and contributing in their own small way to the maturing of prejudices, for coping with changes and new ideas. The American and global society. "The ultimate measure of a man," tenderness is needed to see people as people, to relate to them King insists, "is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and with love and compassion, to share their joys and sorrows.

"Jesus reminds us," he writes, "that the good life combines the controversy" ("On Being a Good Neighbor," Strength to Love).

King rightly took all the risks, and fought for legislation to solve toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove." He the problem of segregation and discrimination in America. He urges his readers, black and white, to resist acquiescence in an unjust system and so to avoid becoming participants in its evil. admitted, however, "that the ultimate solution to the race He is always aware that bitter individuals and groups among the - problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceblacks advocate violence against their white opponents, and for able." That is why he kept reasserting his faith in love as "mankind's most potent weapon for personal and social good reasons. He warns them repeatedly that the victories of transformation."

Everyone familiar with King's writings beviolence are temporary and that its legacy will be hatred and comes accustomed to this emphasis on love, whatever the chaos (Strength to Love). context of the argument.

Coretta King has briefly narrated in her book (My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr.) the experience of tbeir trip to India in March 1959. She reports that Martin returned "more devoted than ever to Gandhian ideals of nonviolence and simplicity of living. He constantly pondered how to apply them in America."

Needless to say, he found many elements in them impossible to adapt, and eventually decided to be like Gandhi "spiritually" rather than in practical ways. His biographer, Stephen B. Oates, reports that King had once "vowed to set aside one day a week for meditation and fasting in the spirit of the Mahatma .... But he could not keep his vow .... What an enemy the phone was to this American Gandhi" (Let the Trumpet Sound, Harper & Row, New York, 1982).

Another biographer of King, U.K. Baruah, calls him "the greatest Gandhian volunteer that ever worked for a cause-a revolution, peaceful yet militant" (Portrait of a Gandhian: "The odd thing about assassins, Biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Guwahati, 1985).

Dr. King, is that they think The first celebration of Martin Luther King Day in America they've killed you." should be an international event that will serve to spread all his ideas, not only those pertaining to nonviolence and racial In March 1959, Martin Luther King fulfilled his long-time dream of visiting equality. He spoke and wrote persistently, for example, about India. Above, right, he and Mrs. King place wreaths at Raj Ghat, the samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi whose philosophy of nonviolence had inspired King. the need to forgive, and the hard-heartedness both of individuals and of society to do so. Acknowledging that society must have its standards, legal checks and restraints, he wanted it to be sympathetic and merciful. "Those who fall below the standards and those who disobey the laws," he wrote sadly, We shall live in peace, We shall overcome, "are often left in a dark abyss of condemnation and have no We shall overcome, We shall live in peace, hope for a second chance.- Ask an innocent young lady who, We shall overcome some day.

We shall live in peace, some day. after a moment of overriding passion, becomes the mother of Deep in my heart Deep in my heart an illegitimate child. She will tell you that society is slow to I do believe I do believe forgive.

Ask a public official who, in a moment's carelessness, We shall overcome some day.

We shall overcome some day. betrays the public trust. He will tell you that society is slow to forgive" ("Love in Action," Strength to Love).

We'll walk hand in hand, The whole wide world around, We'll walk hand in hand, The whole wide world around, Emulation of King's sympathy and mercifulness would lead We'll walk hand in hand, The whole wide world around, to more forgiveness in society. He felt profoundly that social some day. some day. problems are never solved by enforcing the law of revenge. What Deep in my heart Deep in my heart he will always represent is the idea of Love in Action.

0 I do believe We shall overcome

some day.

I do believe We shall overcome

some

day.

"We Shall Overcome" is an old Negro spiritual (writer unknown) that 'came to be regarded as the theme song of the civil rights movement.

About the Author: Nissim Ezekiel is a Bombay-based poet, writer and critic. Among the anthologies he has edited is A Martin Luther King Reader. HisbookJ include The Unfinished Man, Hymns in Darkness and Three Plays.

"We need resident-only parking to virtually guarantees an orderly process protect our neighborhood." that is effective and fair to everybody "Resident-only parking is selfish and concerned. The citizen who takes the trouble to attend meetings of Oak Park's shortsighted. It will seriously jeopardize our community." board of trustees or, as in the instanc.e "It's the high school's problem, not quoted above, hearings of its Parking and ours. Let the high school build a parking Traffic Commission to argue a position, is garage. That's the ultimate solution." assured that his or her voice will be heard "How can the high school build a parking and weighed against all arguments. garage? They're land-poor as it is."

This is the essence of local governNo doubt about it, the village of Oak . ment. Though state and federal governPark, Illinois, population 55,000ments may have greater impact on adjacent to Chicago, population 3.5 million-has a problem finding sufficient parking space. Given the ubiquity of the American automobile, the problem is hardly unique to Oak Park. Fortunately, chances are good that after a series of public meetings, a solution acceptable to a majority of Oak Park citizens will be found. That is because the framework of local government in the United States Above: Oak Park President Sara Bode conducts a village board meeting. The board appoints the manager who has chief responsibility for running the government.

Right: A view of Oak Park's efficient trash collection service along Grove A venue.

citizens' lives, municipal government is closest to the citizens and, therefore,¡ most responsive to their needs and desires.

The type of local government that provides the structure, maintenance and administration of Oak Park is called council-manager government. A professionally trained manager, hired by the village's elected officials, runs the day-today affairs of the village. The councilmanager system has been called "the

greatest advance by American cities since the Revolution." A report by the National Municipal League, a nongovernmental organization of local governing agencies, refers to it as "America's chief contribution to local government." Some 2,500 municipalities, most of them with populations of less than 500,000, have adopted this uniquely American form. And in recent years, larger cities-San Diego, California; San Antonio and Dallas, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Phoenix, Arizona-have also adopted this form of government.

Council-manager government is the most recent of four general types of municipal government that have been developed in the United States. The others are council and weak-mayor government, council and strong-mayor government, and commission government.

The first received its name from the lack of formal powers given to the office of mayor. The "weak mayor" has a voice only in the direction of a city's administrative concerns, although a politi<:ally astute mayor can strengthen that voice.

The center of power is the council of aldermen, elected by the citizens. It supervises administrative affairs by dividing into committees that, in turn, supervise major departments such as police, fire, public works, welfare and finance.

The council and strong-mayor form of municipal government places most administrative responsibilities in the mayor's office, including authority to hire and fire city-department heads and to veto council decisions. This system was adopted throughout the 19th century as a response to the need for more centralized control.

Commission government evolved out of the inability of a mayor-council government to deal effectively with a natural disaster. On September 8, 1900, a tidal wave, spawned by a hurricane, struck Galveston, Texas, killing more than 6,000 persons and causing enormous property damage. Galveston's mayor and council, lacking expertise and flexibility, floundered in their attempt to aid victims, repair damage and restore public services. So the citizens of Galveston petitioned the Texas legislature for authorization to abolish their local government and to replace it with a commission, with one commissioner elected to preside over each department of local government.

One commissioner, chosen either by the public or by the commission, was to serve

as both mayor and department head, but his mayoral duties were to be limited largely to chairing meetings of the commissioners and to performing ceremonial duties. The Galveston commissioners quickly restored order and initiated a strong recovery, and commission government came to be considered as the best form during the first two decades of the 20th century.

The council-manager concept originated in 1908 in Staunton, Virginia, when a study commission, authorized to find ways to improve poor city management, recommended that a technically trained

administrator be hired to oversee municipal functions. Because Staunton did not act immediately on the recommendation, Sumter, South Carolina, in 1912, became the first municipality to adopt this form of local government. In 1914, Dayton, Ohio, virtually bankrupt and recovering from a disastrous flood, reorganized its ineffectual government and hired Henry M. Waite, a city engineer in Cincinnati, Ohio, as its first manager. As Dayton's financial situation and the quality of its services improved markedly, other cities in the United States and Canada soon moved to try this new form, whose hall-

Facing page: Electricians re-install a traffic light damaged by a car.

Above: A game on one offouroutdoorskating rinks maintained by the village administration.

Far left: A health department nurse makes her monthly visit to check up on a prematurely born baby. Left: At meeting for the elderly in the community center, a citizen shows a puppet she has made to sell at a fund-raiser for the needy.

a

mark is efficient, nonpolitical administration of local affairs.

Oak Park became a village in 1901 and steadfastly has chosen to retain that status-a classification usually applied to municipalities of a few hundred or thousand residents. It has a president and a board of six trustees instead of a mayor and a council of aldermen. About the only difference between these two systems is that village trustees are elected at large while aldermen generally are elected within their wards or districts.

Provisions that apply to city officials are applicable to their village counterparts.

In the early 1950s, Oak Park was an affluent, conservative residential community inhabited mainly by the families of merchants, bankers and professionals who commuted by car or public transportation to Chicago's "Loop," or central commercial district. Then as now, Oak Park was noted as a living museum of architectural creativity; hundreds of turnof-the-century homes are officially recognized as having national and international importance. Dominating these are the two dozen houses designed by the famous American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who lived and worked in the village of

Oak Park from 1890 to 1910.

However, there was growing dissatisfaction with the village government. Certain families had assumed strong political roles and the board of trustees had become a house divided; political brawling stalemated the government. The situation was ripe for political reform, and the most obvious need was sound management.

In 1953, an independent, nonpartisan group called the Village Management Association organized a successful referendum for the adoption of councilmanager government and nominated a

slate of candidates, all of whom had been screened for ability and integrity. They were all elected and their first order of business was to find a manager-a competent, professional administrator who would direct the day-to-day business of the village. The association has continued to screen candidates and nominate slates for village office; and although opposing slates usually have been presented, the association's candidates consistently have won. Today Oak Park is nationally recognized for the probity and efficiency of its government.

"Oak Park has, by state statute and by tradition, one of the finest examples of the council-manager plan," says Mark Keane, the village's first manager, who retired in 1983 as executive director of the International City Management Association, based in Washington, D.C. "The 30-year record is an exceptional one," he says.

Oak Park's president and board of trustees, who make laws and set policy, are elected at large for four-year terms.

The president, who presides at meetings, appoints members of special commissions, and performs a host of ceremonial city manager of Wethersfield, Connectiduties, receives an annual salary (more .cut, population 27,000. like an honorarium) of $4,800; the trus"Government of even village size is big tees, who are full-time business and pro- business," he says. "We operate with a fessional people, receive $1,200 each $37 million budget here. And it is the annually. The manager, who has chief most diversified kind of business you responsibility for running the village gov- could think of." ernment, is appointed by the president Municipal concerns include important and board and serves at their pleasure. matters such as water supply, sewerage, He is responsible for managing municipal garbage collection, inspections, crime services, appoints all heads of depart- prevention, fire department, jail maintements and must present a balanced nance, health programs, public recreabudget each year to the trustees. His tion, swimming pools, permits, vital stasalary is $60,000 a year. The only other tistics, billing and collection, accounting, elected official is the village clerk, whose engineering, street cleaning and repair, record-keeping duties require a staff of grass planting, community relations. ten. The clerk's annual salary is $30,000. "Not to mention," adds DeSantis, "manThe manager is the key to the success agement of 500 employees required to of council-manager government. From run this enterprise." the beginning, the emphasis has been on DeSantis cites three solutions to probprofessionalism. Virtually all the 2,500 lems encountered by his administration: council-manager municipalities have manGarbage collection: Switching from agers and other key officials who have trucks that had single steering wheels to undergone special training for their trucks with double steering wheels has positions. Approximately two-thirds of ~enabled crews to collect simultaneously the managers have postgraduate degrees. from both sides of a street or alley; and Ralph A. DeSantis, who has been Oak reduced truck crews from three to two Park's manager since 1980, has a bache- men. This action cut costs by one-third lor's degree from Rutgers University in and enabled the village to increasedrivNew Brunswick, New Jersey, and a mas- ers' wages by 10 percent. ter's degree in public administration from General administration: The introducthe University of Michigan at Ann tion of computer operations throughout Arbor. He earlier served nine years as village government has resulted in in-

Left: An environmental health supervisor, makes a surprise inspection in an Oak Park restaurant. Above, left: Once a week village employees collect garbage that residents wrap in plastic bags and leave outside their houses. Above: A police officer directs traffic on a busy street during peak hours. The village

creased services, more information to the public and reduction of the need to hire additional employees. A computerized water pump, for example, saves the village $100,000 per year.

Revenue: By revising the budget, the administration reduced expenses and increased revenue in a three-year program that responded to a 1980 court decision invalidating a 2 percent utility tax imposed in 1974. The decision called for a refund to taxpayers of $6 milliop-. By agreeing not to raise taxes, the administration persuaded the plaintiffs, a group of citizens who filed suit on behalf of all taxpayers, to reduce this figure to $1.5 million.

Oak Park's government executives, administrators and staff operate from a handsome, block-square Village Hall, whose radical story-and-a-half design of brick and glass is a highly visible symbol on the village's eastern border with Chicago. The hall represents a deliberate expression of village policy-open government, accessibility and commitment to alleviating social pressures that have come with the expansion of metropolitan Chicago in the past two decades. In this period the character of Oak Park changed from suburban to urban, its population from all-white to 11 percent black, an indicator of growth.

also employs 27 part-time school-crossing guards. Right: Building inspectors check the roof and mezzanine of Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio-a national landmark-during a recent renovation. The famed architect, who lived here from 1890 to 1910, designed two dozen houses in the village.

Oak Park adopted a fair-housing ordinance in 1968, before the federal government enacted a similar measure, and it has advertised and promoted itself aggressively as a community that welcomes racial integration. Its programs and laws have served as models for a number of other communities.

The Oak Park Exchange Congress, started in 1977, sets goals and plan strategies for economic development and racial diversity. "They go hand in hand," says DeSantis. "A run-down community won't be attractive to either blacks or whites." Today the congress involves some 200 persons from 50 communities in more than a dozen states. Meeting every other year in Oak Park and in other communities in alternate years, the congress has received national attention for its innovative approach to housing, law, education, community safety and public attitudes.

Oak Park can attribute much of its success to the way that it has chosen to run its affairs. Council-manager government has proved a successful plan in the United Statesfor more than 70 years, and it seems destined to become even more prevalent in the future.

0 About the Author: James Idema is a free-lance

writer based in Chicago, Illinois.

Layinga Foundation The Ford Foundation, which celebrates its golden jubilee this year, is active in development work around the world. Operating in India since 1952, it has so far committed nearly $200 million in grants to 300 institutions.

The Ford Foundation's activities in India cover a range of services on selected themes of human welfare.

Agricultural Development

Above left, scientists at the All-India Coordinated Rice Improvement Project in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.

Urban Poverty

Under two projects of the SelfEmployed Women's Association (SEWA), women in Old Delhi make paper bags (above, with the Foundation's Project¡ Officer Viji Srinivasan second from left) and do embroidery and beadwork (left).

Education and Culture

Rural Poverty

Top, a social forestry project in the Kumaon Hills provides employment to village women.

Far left, experts discuss restoration of a monument in Golconda, Andhra Pradesh.

F

ifty years have passed since Henry and Edsel Ford endowed the Foundation which has carried their family name around the world. Established in January 1936, initially as a charitable endeavor to help needy Americans at the end of the Great Depression, the Ford Foundation went international in 1952 with the opening of its first overseas office in New Delhi at the invitation of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Today, with nine offices around the world, the Foundation in this year of its golden jubilee can justly be proud of its development work worldwide. From inception through 1985, it has made commitments totaling about $6,000 million, including grants to some 8,000 organizations in nearly 100 countries.

With headquarters in New York City and governed by a board of trustees, the Ford Foundation is a private, nonprofit organization that specializes in giving grants for worthy causes. It neither has any connection with nor receives funds

Urban Poverty and Child Survival The Streehitakarini project in a Bombay slum conducts literacy classes for women and provides child care.

from the Ford Motor Company, the U.S. Government or any other private or public institution. It supports its development work through income derived solely from its own endowment fundsestimated at $3,800 million at the end of 1984, when its grants amounted to more than $130 million worldwide.

The Foundation works mainly by giving funds for educational, developmental research and experimental efforts designed to produce significant advances in six selected areas of human welfare: Urban poverty; rural poverty and resources; human rights and social justice; governance and public policy; education and culture; and international affairs. In the United States, urban poverty is the organization's principal concern, with youth employment, school improvement, teenage pregnancy, community revitalization and neighborhood security and crime prevention receiving the greatest support. In developing countries eradication of rural poverty takes the lead with emphasis on improved management of land and water resources, child survival and population control. In recent years, the Foundation has been laying a special emphasis on improving the lot of poor women by providing them with training programs in useful areas for self-employment.

Since it set up operations in India in 1952, the Ford Foundation has committed nearly $200 million in grants and projects to more than 300 Indian institutions through some 600 grants. The major emphasis in¡ India has been on rural development, agricultural research, water-resources management, family planning services and research in reproductive biology, economic and social planning, educational development and linguistics.

The organization's New Delhi office, which remains the largest of its overseas operations, is also responsible for development work in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The Foundation is highly decentralized, with program strategies being shaped to meet local needs. In most field offices, New Delhi included, local program officers share responsibility with expatriate staff in carrying out the Foundation's myriad programs.

People! Talking, planning, thinking, writing; working, together or alone. This is the essence of the Ford Foundation in

India. A visitor to the New Delhi office finds a small building tucked in the corner of a large complex in Lodi Estate. It is a relatively obscure spot in keeping with its "low-profile" image. Inside, the atmosphere is pleasant and the staff cordial.

There is nothing to alert one to the intellectual and financial power vested in this rather modest organization.

Only when the visitor begins to ask questions and listen to the program officers' answers does she catch the excitement and energy emanating from this group of highly trained professionals.

Their ideas are as varied as their experiences, but they all share one thing in common, an enthusiasm and dedication to making a difference in the quality of life, especially of the poor and disadvantaged, in India.

When Program Officer Deep Joshi talks about the Foundation-supported Sukhomajri water tank project in

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CHARMED

BY INDIA Ford's New Face-An Lincoln Chen

Interview With

Shirt sleeves and a warm, almost casual manner belie his position as a "Representative" of one of the world's largest private philanthropies.

Dr. Lincoln Chen is anything but casual about his position as director of Ford Foundation in India, however. He sees his role as an interface between the Foundation and the Indian community and he defines himself and his view clearly: "There are multiple dimensions to my directorship.

First and foremost, I'm responsible for the Foundation here and our relationship with our various Indian colleagues and the government: There are both formal and informal aspects of this. One formal aspect is that we are here as guests of the Indian Government and all our grants are cleared by it. We are constantly in touch and dialogue with the government about our activities. The government here has a very progressive and enlightened view, I think, of the Foundation primarily because of our history and track record in India.!t is a high-quality private Foundation working

i

Haryana, he underscores the concern for the equitable distribution of irrigation water so that poor, landless villagers don't become poorer in contrast to farmers with land adjacent to the new irrigation system. Devising a fair system still leaves the problem of appropriate management to fit the realities of the social and political forces of the village.

Joshi becomes eloquent as he envisions a possible new profession for young university graduates working in rural settings to help solve problems and train organizations such as cooperatives in selfsufficiency. His own rural heritage, coupled with advanced degrees in engineering and management, provides an appropriate background for his dreams.

He calls the Ford Foundation a "field university ... involved in real-life issues."

He speaks of his work with pride.

B.P. Ghildyal is also deeply concerned about rural poverty.

His views have

evolved from a lifetime of teaching, advanced research and administration as a professor of soil science, and from his experience as a member of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

"I find here a real concern for the welfare of the poor; and that adds a whole new dimension to research."

He discusses the rice lands of east India and how the uneven rain and drought conditions there keep crop yields low. In the past, agricultural scientists had not adequately addressed these problem areas.

A new approach, called farm systems research, is now being developed.

The new research approach at the Foundation. according to Ghildyal, is simple yet effective. What happens is that Foundation scientists pick a farmer's fields, introduce new inputs like an improved seed strain and then leave the proof of their efficiency to the plant-growth process itse If.

"A farmer goes from a one-ton to a three-ton yield.

Neighboring farmers then make their own observations.

Once they are convinced, they need not talk to the scientists, but directly to the farmer and ask him to show them how to do it and even get the seeds from him. This way the demonstration effect is quick. In three years it has spread from three or four farmers in certain areas to hundreds of farmers. I'm very encouraged because this means that with no extra expense involved, a farmer can produce three times what he was producing and that is quite a hig step."

The rural poverty program is the largest in the India office and, along with the program on urban poverty, accounts for almost three-fourths of the $7 million awarded in annual grants.

Program officers are quick to point out, however, that not all projects are successful. This is partly because the Foundation is willing

on the cutting edge of important national problems in a sustained professional manner.

"Another dimension is managing the Ford staff here. We have 12 to 16 professionals organized into working groups in a collegial environment. It's a cross between a hierarchical corporate structure and a horizontal university structure.

Most of our people come from universities and my job is to provide an environment for the staff to be at their most productive, and to use their skills in the most creative ways-to encourage questioning about our aspirations and goals, what we're trying to achieve, and what's realistic.

"Third is my own professional work.

I'm a physician so I like to do as much work myself as I can in the program of child survival, nutrition and population. I work directly with the program staff in those areas."

What might sound like an awesome responsibility to many is easily taken in his stride by this relatively young and dedicated professional.

Chen is in his early 40s. He talks of his earlier work in

Bangladesh and the profound effect this experience had on his career: "My wife -was raised in India. She's from a missionary family. So when there was an opportunity for me to do medical research in Bangladesh we both went there. It was at that time that there were two major crises. One was the great 1970 cyclone when we both got involved in relief work and then in 1971 there was the independence war, the split with Pakistan. It was from those two experiences that I decided to go into public health.

After I received training [Chen earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1968 and a degree in public health from Johns Hopkins Upiversity in 1973], I joined Ford Foundation."

Chen came to India in 1981 and took over an organization Which had undergone enormous changes. The Foundation had shrunk from a staff of 125 in the 1950s and 1960s (when it provided direct foreign technical and management expertise to the government) to about a dozen professionals making grants to Indian organizations largely in the nonprofit, private and public sectors. Chen sees this change as appropriate to India's own growth as an increasingly sophisticated society with achievements which are indeed impressive. The new role fits today's India and Chen is quick to point out the

Foundation's support of this shift: "What's really happened in the last five years is that we've become a hybrid organization here. The India office of the Ford Foundation is no longer simply just an extension of U.S. philanthropy.

It really is very much a partnership in terms of the professional decision making. Indian professional staff in the office are very strong, and they very much see things in their own individual ways. And their views are as powerful as, if not more powerful than, those of the foreign staff in deciding how our programs are shaped.

So what has happened is that in essence the office is a joint India-U.S. private collaboration where we are tapping into the resources of an American philanthropy for work in India. And I believe this to be a healthy evolution of the Foundation in India."

The quiet, even manner of Chen's speech becomes more enthusiastic as he talks about his personal satisfactions: "My wife, children and I love being in this country.

We're very attached to India, not just professionally but personally also.

"In fact, what I enjoy most about my work is the tremendous diversity of people and places in India that I interact with. I just don't think there is a better job in the world."

0

to take risks, to be innovative, and partly because staffers have had to learn and evolve with India itself.

F.e. Bhambri, the director of administrative services, has been with the Foundation for over 27 years. From his unique perspective, he traces how the Foundation has changed in style and priorities over the years. "If the Ford Foundation had tried to do something for grass roots and voluntary organizations earlier, perhaps it wouldn't have been successful because the need then was for national institution-building.

Having reached a fairly satisfactory level in these, we have realized that the improvements have not reached the real poor as much as they have the middle class. The Indian Government also is focusing help on those below the poverty line, especially women, because they have been neglected in several areas. So we are partners in that effort."

Bhambri's philosophy: "One thing I have learned from all these different people, different styles, is that you have to be flexible.': Flexibility is mentioned frequently at the Foundation; flexibility in making grants with a minimum of bureaucratic constraints, flexibility in the process of working with each other and with a variety of levels within Indian society, and flexibility to change and evolve as new needs and problems are recognized.

Dr. Saroj Pachauri sums up her experience as program officer: "I took up this job because I thought this would give me much more flexibility and I would be able to do things that I really wanted to. I must say I've never regretted the decision. In this job one has to interact with all kinds of people, from the bureaucrats and technocrats at the top, to the academic people and researchers, right down to the people at the grass-roots level who are implementing programs."

Dr. Pachauri is an epidemiologist with primary responsibility for child survival and population work in both rural and urban areas. She decides the most effective methods to reach people in their communities and also looks after the health services. She shows photographs from Streehitakarini, a project which received Foundation funds to expand health clinics and family planning programs in a Bombay slum. Streehitakarini, the brainchild of Dr. Indumati Parikh, began 20 years ago with a group of 14 middle-class women, who, although they

a

had no personal experience of a slum environment, were highly motivated and determined.

Getting local residents to use the small clinic they set up was the first of many problems the group learned to surmount.

In the mid-1970s Ford Foundation funded an expansion of the project, and by 1984 more than 16,000 households with a total population of 100,000 were benefiting from it. Streehitakarini's staff strength has grown to 150 persons; all except eight are female, and 90 percent of them are'from the community they serve.

Talking about people is not the same as meeting them, however, and a trip with Program Officer Viji Srinivasan into the old city of Delhi provides a multisensory experience. SEWA-Bharat, SelfEmployed Women's Association, India, is really a cluster of loosely affiliated voluntary organizations formed to help women organize themselves, fight exploitation, and learn new skills. The Delhi chapter of SEWA works primarily with zardosi (beading and embroidery) and iifafa (paper bags) workers. It .has been successful in obtaining credit and increased wages for the women as well as in training them in new skills and direct marketing ventures.

Watching a woman and several young girls swiftly folding and pasting the discarded pages of a notebook into neat envelopes is like watching a classic finger ballet. Rarely do they need to glance at their work as they chat with the program officer and their community organizer, Chandbi.

In the Muslim section, a 3-meter-by4-meter room holds a cluster of people as a young woman demonstrates the colorful beading and embroidery work, which earns her about Rs. 15 a day.

The community organizers are the backbone of this program and their salaries are part of the expenses the Foundation grant covers.

Gil Levine, a former professor at Cornell University, coordinates the rural poverty program at the Foundation.

"Each of us has a reasonable amount of time to try and think a little bit, to look ahead and try to identify the issues that aren't being addressed," he says. "Then if I think I've found some area that addresses the needs of the poor, I look for potential grantees. I spend 30 percent of my time traveling, both to gain familiarity with the problems and to get a sense of who is doing what. Then we think of

some ways we can help the villagers do basically what they want to do. We may influence them a little bit by the way we look at a problem, but I think we've found that unless it's fundamentally something they want to do, you don't get a very good output. So there are some adjustments on both sides before a grant is finalized."

Matching grant proposals, institutions, individuals and themes is a continuing activity at Ford Foundation, and the themes themselves change with the times.

Three new themes are international affairs programs, which focus on India's international economic relations; the human rights and governance area, which supports some social action groups and legal concerns such as common land usage; and the culture and education program where there is growing support in preserving the rich cultural traditions, crafts and artifacts of India.

Joanna Williams, an art historian who did her graduate studies in India, is on leave from her university position in the United States to pursue innovative culture grants. She outlines an exciting new multidisciplinary approach to culture preservation and revitalization-a project to gather the folklore, crafts, literature of and information about important sites and events along the Mahanadi River in Orissa from its source to its mouth. Another project will develop an ancient fort near Jaipur into a "living museum" with craft workers, puppet shows and the many accouterments of the Rajasthani Rajput civilization.

"Working in development is a real eye opener," says Williams. "It's a side of India I never got to see as a scholar.

Learning how to get things done is exciting."

Getting things done seems to sum up Ford Foundation's attitude. Work done with and by people, especially poor and oppressed people, must be the vital concern of all nations.

Bhambri captures the reality: "While there is definitely fantastic progress in several areas in India, nobody can deny the fact that poor people should receive top priority. Only then can freedom become meaningful."

0 About the Author: Gwenneth Rae, professor of human development, counseling and family studies, University of Rhode Island, is a Fulbright lecturer in India for 1985-86, teaching at Lady Irwin College in New Delhi and at the University of Baroda.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

"I think I've found the problem ... it's not a TV, it's a microwave oven."

Reprinted with permission from the Saturday Evening Post Society, a division of BFl. and MS. Inc. Š 1983.

( "This is Fred Monder with the news. The Slovodian capitol was bombed at ten o'clock this morning. We now take you live to Slovodia and Sam Niles."

"This is Sam Niles in Slovodia. The Slovodian capitol was bombed at ten o'clock this morning. And now, back to you, Fred Monder."

"Thank you, Sam. That was Sam Niles in Slovodia reporting live on the bombing of the Slovodian capitol at ten o'clock this morning."

MOON BASE

Establishing a permanent Moon base is a daunting engineering challenge, but experts say it can be done.

The Moon will be an outstanding location for astronomical studies, and a possible springboard to other planets.

At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, two highly regarded space experts spearhead a grass-roots campaign to turn the nation's thoughts toward carving out a fresh foothold on the Moon.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a leading American scientist-the only one who has walked on the Moonproposes the Millennium Project, a Mars expedition early in the 21st century that would use the Moon as a training base.

At major gatherings in La Jolla, California, Los Alamos, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., packed meeting rooms are the scenes of impassioned, and sometimes heated, discussion aimed at a single long-range goal: establishing a permanent manned base on the Moon.

With the United States committed to putting a permanent station in orbit around Earth in the next seven years, the pressure is building to look ahead to the 21st century-to go back to the Moon, not just for a quick visit, but to stay. The nation's space experts agree that it can be done, and some are already sketching the outlines for what could be the greatest engineering challenge ever.

Would it be worth the price? Some say no. But Moon-base backers are marshaling their arguments: Most important, they say, is that the Moon could become economically selfsupporting by supplying raw materials to the space station. And it could do much more. "A lunar base gives the operational experience you need before you can colonize the planets," said astronomer Wendell Mendell of Johnson Space Center's Solar System Exploration Division. "It's a site for studying Earth and the Sun, and for astronomy." Finally, it's a base for studying the Moon itself-still mysterious despite six excursions by Apollo astronauts across its desolate surface.

Like every multibillion-dollar government project, the Moon-base concept draws opponents. "It would be tunnel vision to say that a Moon base is the goal after a space station," said Jesco von Puttkamer, a long-range planner at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters

in Washington, D.C. "Going back to the Moon is just one option we're looking at."

Famed space scientist Dr. James Van Allen is lukewarm to the idea, calling it "cheese in the sky." And astronomer Carl Sagan fears that funding a lunar colony would delay any expedition to Mars, which he considers more important.

Dr. Harrison H. (Jack) Schmitt disagrees. Geologist and former U.S. Senator from New Mexico, Schmitt walked on the Moon as an Apollo astronaut in 1972. He now writes and lectures widely, serves on several presidential advisory boards, and is actively pushing for the United States to spearhead an international project to land astronauts on Mars early in the next century. He calls it the Millennium Project, and sees a Moon base as an ideal training ground. "It's a stepping stone to Mars," he told me. The Millennium Ship would be assembled at the space station and launched from there on a two-year round trip that would include putting a party of explorers on the Martian surface for 30 days. "A Moon base could give us the experience we need to live on another planet," he said.

"It's the next step on the frontier," agreed Mendell, who puts the date for the first lunar settlement at about 2007.

NASA is not ready to take an official position on either a Moon base or the Millennium Project. But it did convene a three-day scientific symposium in Washington, D. c., in'October 1984 to hear scores of reports favoring a lunar base. More than 300 people participated, all influential in science, engineering and aerospace.

NASA's meeting built on recommendations from two sources: a lunar-base working group convened at Los Alamos by both the space agency and the University of California's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics earlier in Facing page: An artist's impression of a lunar freighter, loaded with oxygen tanks floating over the Moon. The large heat shield in front helps to slow :hefreighter as it enters Earth orbit. A propellant storage depot, at lower left, collects liquid oxygen from the Moon base, and a small space station, at lower right, hovers above the propellant storage depot.

1984, and a ten-week summer workshop at the California Space Institute in La Jolla. Both sessions concluded that a Moon base could help meet important space-exploration goals early next century.

Instruments placed permanently on the Moon could open new and exciting windows on space research, according to Los Alamos physicist Paul Keaton. Seismometers, heat-flow sensors and other instruments would fill in the gaps Apollo's brief forays left in understanding the Moon's crust and mineral resources. Astronomical observations would be free of distortions generated by Earth's atmosphere. "In addition, the far side of the Moon is permanently shielded from direct radiofrequency emissions from Earth," Keaton said. "This uniquely quiet lunar environment may be the only place where sensitive instruments can be fully utilized in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."

For mining the Moon's resources, a thorough understanding of the Moon is needed, Keaton noted. NASA is considering a lunar survey in the early 1990s by an unmanned Lunar Ge~science Orbiter that would use remote-sensing techniques to provide such information. (In a surprise announcement last March, the Soviets revealed plans for a lunar mission in 1989 or 1990. The renewed Soviet Moon program, on hold since 1976, may -affect NASA plans.) he lunar-base group stated that there are no insurmountable obstacles to establishing a Moon base. "We are convinced that exploration beyond Earth is a natural function of a space-faring nation," its report said.

T

With a shining blue, brown and white sphere overhead bringing pale light to the pre-dawn days, the entire population of Earth's most remote frontier settlement-just 22 people for

now-gathers to watch the big lunar ferry blast upward in a cloud of Moon dust. As it disappears into the black sky, taking its precious cargo of liquid oxygen toward a space-station rendezvous in Earth orbit, the scientists and technicians return to work.

The open-pit mine, gouged into the finely ground rubble, will be carved deeper today by a small crew operating tightly sealed machines. And in a small observatory on a nearby knoll, astronomers will train their telescope on a passing comet.

Donning pressure suits for the 400-meter trek across the cratered plain, yet another group will spend the day in maintenance on the oxygen-producing plant that makes the colony virtually selfsupporting.

More than a ton of Moon rocks brought to Earth by astronauts proved that the Moon is a rich source of useful materials. "Nobody's talking about mining resources on the Moon and shipping them back down to Earth," said Dr. Bevan French, a respected lunar scientist at NASA headquarters. "We haven't found anything that valuable." But scientists are looking at lunar materials for use at the Moon base and for export to the space station. One of the most valuable lunar materials is oxygen.

"Lunar rocks are half oxygen," French explained. It's not free oxygen, of course, but chemically combined with a variety of other elements including titanium, calcium, aluminum, iron, silicon and magnesium. A nuclear-powered processing plant could break down lunar minerals and extract oxygen in commercial volumes, the experts say.

"The heaviest component of any payload lifted to Earth orbit is oxygen," French pointed out. It means more than just life support in space. The most efficient rockets, including those that power the space shuttle and advanced upper stages such as the Centaur, are fueled by hydrogen and oxygen.

Oxygen accounts for 56 percent of the Centaur's total weight.

"Liquid oxygen will be a major item of commerce in space," said Dr. Michael Duke of the Johnson Space Center. Duke is curator of the lunar-rock collection returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts and, with Mendell, is a prime mover in lunar-base studies. "It makes sense to export it from the Moon to the space station," he added.

The numbers look good. MenA Moon base will require a permanent space station. But whether such a base is built or not, a manned space station is almost a certainty by 1992, the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. The u.s. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has begun preliminary design activity in association with industry to develop such a facility.

Seen here is a conceptualization of a space station that will use the space shuttle (bottom) as a delivery vehicle.

dell estimates that three-fourths of all space-shuttle missions in the 1990s will carry oxygen to the U.S. space station-for life support, to combine with hydrogen to make water and to fuel rockets. Oxygen for fuel will be a major need.

"For missions launched from low' orbit, your propellant [hydrogen and oxygen] is three or four times heavier than your payload," Duke told me. But when you start from Earth, the ratio is worse. Just 1.5 percent of the space shuttle's lift-off mass is payload. From the Moon, Duke says, about 50 percent of lift-off mass can be payload because the energy needed to escape the Moon's low gravity is so much less. Thus Duke and Mendell believe that lunar oxygen could be shipped to the space station at competitive prices.

But first the United States must establish its space station in low Earth orbit. Initial segments of the station are planned for operation in late 1992. Any manned Moon journey now foreseen will start from the station, not from Earth,.

Populating even a small lunar base by 2007 is a major engineering project, the experts say, but not one requiring great leaps in technology. "We have the technological capability to do it now," Duke told me. "But we need to define exactly what we'll do there and answer a lot of questions about how to do it."

"This is no imaginary game called '2001,''' said Bevan French. "The next century is just around the corner. NASA has to start funding the project in 1992 to have a base in 2007. That means the next American President will make the decision. We intend to have the data base ready for that decision."

Life on the Moon in the early years was spartan and harsh.

Modified orbital transfer vehicles (oTVs) brought two types of landing vehicles to lunar orbit, then returned to the space station.

One lander type carried cylindrical space-station modules, modified for Moon life, and specially designed soil movers to the lunar surface; it was a one-way trip. Other landers, similar to Apollo's lunar module, included an ascent stage to return crew or cargo to lunar orbit. The soil movers would function later in mining operations. But first, driven by astronauts who stayed only a few weeks at a time, they heaped two meters of lunar soil over the modules to protect them from solar-flare radiation.

Living underground, the first inhabitants saw daylight only while working on the surface. Their jobs were exploration, setting up pilot plants for oxygen extraction, growing experimental crops and taking the first steps toward developing processing methods for using lunar minerals to make cement, glass and even steel.

Gradually, the base expanded.

"The moment you talk about living on the Moon, you get into a lot of engineering problems," French said. Among the most obvious: -Structures and habitation. Airtight and temperaturecontrolled structures must be designed. In the full glare of sunlight at lunar noon, they'll absorb heat that must be dissipated. During the lunar night, when temperatures on exterior surfaces can drop to minus 157 degree C, interiors must be kept warm and comfortable. With no atmosphere to screen out radiation from infrequent but potentially deadly solar flares, habitats must protect colonists when the flares occur.

The problems are similar to those faced by space-station designers. But some problems will be different. Lunar soil is

fertile if it gets water, so some structures must be designed to grow crops. Much of the study in the next few years will center on how to design habitats that can be easily installed, then expanded later. "We also have to look at the human factors," French said. Lunar life will be a closed society, not unlike living on a desert island.

- Food, air, water, fuel and wastes. "There's a great benefit if you can close the cycle and don't have to keep resupplying the base," Duke explained. "We have the technology today, but it needs work to make it more efficient." Fuel cells, for instance, combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce water and electricity.

But the scale is small compared with a lunar colony's needs.

Spacecraft systems today scrub out carbon dioxide and unpleasant odors from recycled air, but again the question is one of scale. And making enough water to allow a Moon colony to grow its own food will mean shipping hydrogen from Earth.

-Collection and use of lunar materials. It's easy to get iron on the Moon, Duke said. One method suggested is to simply drag an electromagnet through lunar soil. There's enough pure crystalline iron in the rubble to provide metal for structures or reinforcing bars in cement made from the soil. Silicon compounds abound in lunar soils and could be made into a variety of glasses. Again, water is needed. "With more energy-and can get manganese, chromium, nickel, more difficulty-you aluminum and magnesium in useful quantities," Duke told me.

-Space transportation. This is the central question to all Moon-base discussions. Most important, backers hope to influence NASA decisions in the next few years, including the design of an OTV that will operate from the space station. It's conceived as a rocket stage that will put satellites into geostationary orbit and perform other ferry-type functions between the space station and Earth orbit. ore versatile OTV -one with lunar capabilitycould reopen the door to the Moon at a more reasonable cost. Launched from the space station, it could bring crew or cargo to lunar orbit. With additional landing and ascent stages, it would be the primary space station-to-Moon ferry. Duke and Mendell calculate that an OTV launched from the space station must be able to put 38,000 kilograms of payload into lunar orbit. Part of that must be the additional stages for landing on the Moon and returning to lunar orbit. The OTV will be included in space-station costs, but lunar stages would be a significant added cost.

"A Moon base will cost $10,000 million to $30,000 million, spent over a 10- to IS-year period," French said. Other estimates range up to $70,000 million. "But if we don't get an OTV that can go to lunar orbit with little modification, the cost will go up significantly."

Jack Schmitt agrees but points out the need for a new Saturn-type heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLV). Launched from Earth, the HLV would carry massive payloads, including space-station components, that won't fit aboard a space shuttle.

It could also put large payloads on the Moon. A disposable HLV, if available, could allow a Moon base to grow faster by bringing even larger payloads to the lunar surface. And without an HLV to bring components of a Mars ship to the space station for assembly. the Millennium Project won't happen. NASA decisions on both the HLV and OTV are several years away.

A

Bright rocket exhaust flared on the television screen as the threescore lunar settlers-seasoned extraterrestrial inhabitants who were grade-school children in 1986-watched the Millennium Ship depart from the space station for Mars. Aboard the ship were tanks filled with oxygen shipped from the base. Its crew included friends who had trained on the Moon for the two-year Mars mission. The cheering subsided, and the Millennium Ship disappeared from view. With the ship departed; it was time to go to work, now just another day of life on the Moon.

Can the Moon be colonized? Yes. Will it be done? The question has no immediate answer.

NASA's budget today has not a cent dedicated to establishing the data base that will lead to an intelligent decision. Yet the idea is blossoming in the minds of scientists and engineers.

Duke, Mendell, French and many others will use the results of the lunar-base meetings to develop a formal plan this year, aimed at guiding NASA toward a decision. Just $2 million or $3 million a year for the next few years will be enough to do the analysis needed, Duke said. After that it becomes a political question to be answered by the U.S. President and Congress.

"The one argument you never hear is that it can't be done," French told me. "That's a measure of how far we've come in space capability."

But strong and lasting public support will be mandatory.

"It's got to be a long-term program," Duke said. "We can't just set people on the Moon and then abandon it again."

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Shown above is an artist's concept of lunar mining operations that illustrates the production of liquid oxygen, the chief industry of the Moon base. It begins with a strip mine (l) where front-end loaders dig out soil. They deliver it to an automated plant (2) where the mineral ilmenite (FeTiD]) is separated out, then chemically reduced by heating in the presence of hydrogen brought from Earth. Products of the

reaction are iron, titanium oxide and water. Some water is piped to an electrolysis facility (3), where the hydrogen and oxygen we separated.

OXYRen is liquefied anejstored in spherical tanks (4). One such tank is being hoisted for delivery to a lunar ferry (5), now descending. which will transport it to a propellant storage depot in lunar orbit. In the center sits a stack of hydrogen tanks (6) imported from Earth.

Above: Earth-orbiting lunar freighter (1), loaded with hydrogen tanks imported from Earth, is about to embark for the Moon. An Earthorbiting propellant storage depot (2) stores hydrogen tanks at one end and oxygen tanks at the other. Another storage facility for hydrogen is the shuttle's external tank (3), now the only part of the shuttle

that's not reused (it's jettisoned into the Indian Ocean). In this concept it would be boosted into orbit, and hydrogen tanks delivered from Earth would be attached to the rear. Here the robotic cargo handler (4) has just been used to attach a hydrogen tank. A space shuttle (5) and the low-Earth-orbit space station (6) are seen in the rear.

.1 'ADA .I • I.~•• IAWADA r~I~

Nargis, ethereally beautiful, stared out from the centerspread as The Village Voice, New York's weekly newspaper, heralded Film-Utsav India with a note on the opening film, Aawara. "The Museum of MOderb Art's massive India season," said the paper, "opens with a tribute to the subcontinent's first international superstar-director, actor Raj Kapoor, a vulnerable Clark Gable-type with a gift for physical comedy."

Made more than three decades ago, Aawara has been a continuing hit not only in India but also in several other countries. As The Village Voice pointed out, it "was one of the most popular foreign films ever released in the Soviet Union, [and] Kapoor was not only compared with Chaplin but affectionately redubbed 'Ivan.'" The Museum of Modern Art in New Y(\)rk had a showing of the film five years ago. But Film-Utsav (a part of the Festival of India) will give Kapoor, whom historian Elliott Stein has described as "the showman of Indian cinema," a much wider American audience. Film-Utsav, which premiered with Aawara in New York last November, will screen a total of 50 classical and contemporary Indian films in 12 American cities.

Raj Kapoor made a personal appearance at the Film-Utsav India premiere-older, 'grayer, heavier than his Aawara days.

It was nostalgia time for him.

Describing his participation in Film-Utsav as a "dream come true," Kapoor talked of his visit 33 years ago as a member of India's first film delegation to the United States. Aawara, his

Nargis and Raj Kapoor in Aawara with which the festival of Indian films in New York was inaugurated,

Goes to New York third film as director, had then just been completed and he was introduced at a gala at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Three decades later, speaking to guests at the 1985 FilmUtsav press luncheon at the Bombay Palace in New York, Kapoor recalled his words to the members of the American film industry in 1952: "You don't know me, and rightly so, because you have never seen any work of mine. I, however, have the privilege to say that I know many of the filmmakers, producers, actors, actresses present here because I have seen your work. It shall be a great day and a great achievement when my work will come in front of you and perhaps then, if I live to see that day, I shall talk to you again."

And just the way it happens in the movies, the dream came true. The famed dream sequence of Aawara, incidentally, though too surrealistic to come true, did come in for special mention by the film critic of The Village Voice: " ... a stupendous dream sequence in which a mist-and-sequin Christian heaven gives way to a no less tawdry vision of giant skulls and six-armed Hindu deities.

Not the least of the special effects is Nargis, the reigning Indian female star of her day."

The Voice article continued: "A three-hour musical extravaganza that's also a left-wing slum drama, the film is a sponge that's absorbed every cliche east of the sun and west of the moon."

In other words, Aawara is a fairly typical representation of a particular kind of Indian cinema.¡ As Raj Kapoor told the audience, "When you see my work, perhaps then you will understand the Indian cinema of the 1950s. I do not claim to have made cinema the way it is

A festival of Indian cinema opens in the United States with Raj Kapoor's 1950s hit.

Above: Nargis and Raj Kapoor in Shri 420, which is also being shown at FilmUtsav. Left: Kapoor directs Mandakinifor his latestfilm, Ram Teri Ganga Maili.

understood in most festivals. I belong to the cinema that belongs to the people. Cinema that reaches the farthest corners of the world. For I believe that in today's world of scientific growth and technology, cinema is a great medium, if not the greatest medium of mass communication and mass contact. Cinema has the capacity to bring the people of the world together."

Focusing on Film-Utsav, Raj Kapoor said, "I am very confident that the culture of India through the films we have brought here will come closer

and rest in the hearts of the American people."

Looking at the large group of reporters and film buffs at the screening of Aawara, a satisfied Kapoor said, "When I was a child in school, my teacher used to say, 'Well begun is half done.' We've just begun, and hopefully begun well, by coming here amidst all of you for the beginning of this celebration of the festival of Indian cinema. I am positive it will bring the American and the Indian people closer together ... and will open great avenues and also a lot of shop

windows to the hearts of the people of this country."

Reactions of the openingnight audience and film critics justified Kapoor's confidence.

"Marvelous ... very entertaining ... easily understood ... very international even though it is specifically Indiani>-these were some of the comments of the first-night viewers. "Aawara has the feeling of a 1950s musical," said Deborah Silverfine, a member of the New York State Council of the Arts. "To me," she continued, "it has the same sort of story as Boy Gone Bad, with musical numbers interspersed. And yet, at the same time, it has that gritty quality of Italian neorealism in the postwar films coming out of tlirope.

It's a very energetic story and a very unusual musical. There's something in it for American audiences. And there is the magic of India in it."

Variety critic Dan Gilroy saw certain similarities with old American films-a phenomenon he described as interesting and "a tribute to American filmmakers." He added, "One of the drawing cards for American film enthusiasts will be the names of the prominent Indian filmmakers represented at this festival."

Thirty films of five filmmakers will be shown in the first part¡ of Film- Utsav under the section "Profiles." Sharing the honors with Raj Kapoor are v. Shantaram, Guru Dutt, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. Part II of the Film-Utsav entitled "Panorama," will show 20 outstanding recent films, both narrative and documentary.

Film-Utsav is a joint venture of New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, California) and the Los Angeles University's Film, Television and Radio Archives.

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COMPUTERS

The Next Frontiers A video screen that reads your lips (above, the words that are spoken appear on the computer screen), a car that won't budge if the driver has been drinking, doors that lock and unlock with voice commands ... these are just a few of the high-technology possibilities as computers become superfast, supersmart and superfriendly. These new frontiers are being explored in the United States by thousands of men and women working individually, in universities and for corporations. Collectively, their discoveries and breakthroughs rank among the most awesome accomplishments of the century. Featured here are five such geniuses who have made a difference. The reports on thefollowing pages give a glimpse of the horizon-the anticipated advances, breakthroughs and trends.

Ira Goldstein Daniel Hillis

Douglas Reilly

Douglas Reilly's scientific discipline is esoteric-"adaptive system technology." At 33, he is chief researcher in Providence, Rhode Island, for Nestor, Incorporated, which develops computer systems that learn. They do so by remembering key features of data and then recognizing those features again, even if distorted. Explains Reilly: "An example of the problem is to make the computer recognize all '2s' as '2s' and distinguish them from '3s' and other characters." Nestor approaches this problem by having computers process data in a manner similar to that of the human brain. It's a nice fit-Reilly's doctoral thesis in physics dealt with neurons, the basic units of the brain. His enthusiasm is evident: "You've never seen anything like our systems. They learn before your very eyes.

We're doing things that have never been done before anywhere in the world."

For more than two years, Jay Miner labored 16 hours a day, seven days a week as he and a group of engineers in Santa Clara, California, "designed three tiny computer chips. They were sensational-like nothing that had come before. The result is Commodore International's new Amiga computer, which boasts mind-boggling graphics, animation and eartingling sound. "I actually did a lot of the grunt work-

documentation, testing, checking," recalls Miner, 53, the chip set's lead designer and the acknowledged father of the Amiga. By the time it all ended, he had gained 18 kilograms-partly a result of late-night eating binges with colleagues-and was "as pale as a sheet." Miner, who brings to work a small black mongrel named Mitchie, has roamed through the semiconductor industry since 1963. Indeed, his resume reads like a history of Silicon Valley-Commodore is his 10th employer. Earlier, Miner designed some of the crucial microchips used in Atan videogame machines and home computers and helped found Amiga, which was bought by Commodore in 1984. Having gone through all this, he considers the Amiga computer his greatest achievement. Says a confident Miner: "I believe that this machine will revitalize the home-computer market."

From computer "geek" to software superstar-that's Bill Budge. He is one of a legion of programers who rode the personal-computer explosion to fame and fortune. Budge, 31, is best known for two programsRaster Blaster, a pinball game, and Pinball Construction Set, which lets users design their own games. Royalties for these and other programs now reach six figures a year-as much as $500,000 if business is strong. That's a far cry from the $700 printer that Budge got from Apple Computer for rights to his first

commercial product, a hastily written "pong" game. In high school, Budge became consumed with programing: "It was like a religious experience." It also made Budge a social outcast. "I was a computer geek in high schoolthe sort everyone stayed away from." Budge's $250,000 home overlooking San Francisco is jammed with gadgets-a toy robot, a laser printer, a compact-disc player and three Apple computers on which he works. But work has become tedious as projects grow more complex. Rather than continue working solo, Budge may hire others to assist him on his current creation-a space shuttle simulator for Apple's Macintosh.

As the birth of his second child neared, HewlettPackard's (HP) Ira Goldstein rigged up a pager to beep if his computer terminal received an electronic message that included his wife's name and the word "urgent." It was, in effect, a rudimentary form of artificial intelligence (AI).

The 37-year-old Goldstein is a pioneer in AI. As director of HP's Applications Techno!ogy Center in Palo Alto, California, he headed a team that worked in secret for four years to create a new AI program109 language.

From that comes computer software that mimics the problem-solving abilities of the human mind.

Goldstein uses cartoons, many drawn by his mother-inlaw, to underscore themes.

One drawing hanging near his office shows a scientist asking

a computer for advice on solving a difficult physics problem.

He believes that such interaction should be feasible within the next five years. To relax, Goldstein used to fly old biplanes until the hobby got too expensive. But these days he's at his desk from 6 until 6, five days a week.

Goldstein, who devotes weekends to the family, keeps his work in perspective: "My 4-year-old is smarter than any computer; it will be a while before AI allows computers to learn with the skill of a young child."

While getting his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Daniel Hillis also designed toys, one of them a giant tick-tack-toe game made of 10,000 Tinkertoy pieces. Now Hillis, a scientist at Thinking Machines, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is assembling another giant construction project-the Connection Machine. It's a small supercomputer that will contain 64,000 microprocessors and operate with "parallel processing." Rather than solving problems in stepby-step sequence, the Connection Machine bteak~ problems up into thousands of pieces and works on them simultaneously. Hillis, 28, entered MIT with intentions of becoming a neurophysiologist. Exposure to computers changed all that. One professor told him: "If you want to learn how the brain works, study computers instead of medicine."

He did.

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ter years of phenomenal growth, the computer industry-from micro to mini to mainframe-had lost its upward zip. With even the market leaders registering multimillion dollar losses, the industry and computer users needed help.

It's on the way. Within months or at the most a few years, dozens of advances will make computers superfast, supersmart and superfriendly. These breakthroughs constitute a turning point-what numerous authorities call the "next frontiers" of computer development. "We are entering a time that will be recalled as the birth of new and markedly different kinds of computers," says Arno Penzias, vice-president for research at Bell Laboratories. "They will make today's best machines seem like Model Ts." Consider: A typewriter without keyboard that converts speech to written text with near perfect accuracy. A car that won't budge if you've been drinking. A robot that "sees" with such precision that it manipulates objects as tiny as a contact lens or as large as a truck. A video screen that reads your lips, eyes and gestures, anticipating what you want and then providing it. These are just some developments on the way that are likely to make the computer even more pervasive than it is today.

Foremost among technological breakthroughs is a dramatic increase in the speed and capacity of electronic chips, the tiny slivers of silicon that are the nerve cells of every computer.

One-megabit chips, each containing a million transistors, now allow computer designers to fabricate "friendlier" machines with powerful analytical skills. These semiconductors also permit the design of ultrafast machines that will imbue computers with logic and insight.

Improvement in sen:Iiconductor technology is proceeding at almost a geometric rate as more and more memory is crammed into less and less space. Circuits on the newest million-transistor chips will be a mere I-micron thick-1I100th the thickness of a human hair. This I-megabit chip leapfrogs by a factor of four the current state-of-the-art chips that store 256,000 bits of data.

In its labs, International Business Machines (IBM) has fabricated circuits even smaller-half a micron thick. These powerful circuits foster enormous internal memory that facilitates voice storage and recognition technologies that will lock and unlock doors with voice commands, or store TV programs and replay them crystal clear in three dimensions.

Logic chips, which compute rather than store information, also are advancing quickly. A new Intel microprocessor runs 17 times faster than that used in IBM's first personal computer (PC). It can address up to 4,000 million characters or internal memory, compared with just 1 million characters for the chip used :iI the Pc. The absolute limit? It's not even in sight. James Meindl, codirector of Stanford University's Center for Integrated Systems, insists that memory chips holding no fewer than 1,000 million transistors will be available by the end of the century.

As scientists pack silicon circuits to minute densities, others explore newer chip technologies. Gallium arsenide allows electrons to be moved three to six times faster. Still swifter are superlattices-chips assembled atom by atom that combine different semiconductor materials into a single, multilayered chip. Supercooled semiconductors immersed in liquid helium lose nearly all resistance to electrical current and function at incredible speeds.

Such r~search will dramatically bring down costs. Says Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Cornell University: "There's no reason why we can't have the power of a supercomputer in a desk-top computer costing $500,000."

Computers can't think or reason or read your mind. Not yet.

But one Pentagon project envisions computers that would scan a pilot's brain waves and other vital signs, sense his alertness and give him only as much information as he could absorb.

Already, computers are astonishingly good at making educated guesses with breathtaking speed and accuracy. In the Manhattan offices of Shearson Lehman Brothers, for instance, a computer program swiftly compares investment prospects and suggests interest-rate swaps that will bring the best financial return. Of the $15 million the firm reaped in one year from such transactions, $1 million was attributed to the computer's analytical skills.

The Shearson program, designed by Gold Hill Computers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an example of an "expert system"-a branch of artificial intelligence, or AI, that mimics human experts in solving highly specialized problems.

Worried about falling asleep at the wheel? In Nissan's Maxima, an optional "drowsiness-warning system" will recognize signs of driver fatigue and sound an alarm. Nissan's backup-alarm system sounds a warning when you get close to other cars, curbs or obstacles.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler also combine automobiles and computers in novel ways. They offer such features as self-adjusting suspensions, sensors that alter fuel mixture for efficient combustion and systems that diagnose a car's mechanical troubles. Detroit expects to install devices to map routes and allow drivers to locate their positions on dashboard-display maps of city streets. Another product, similar to airliner flight recorders, would store details of a car's operation to aid in repaIrs. Honda has a "smart gearshift." As a driver shifts the four main gears, a microprocessor controls three intermediate gears for smoothness and better fuel economy. A radar autocruise system under study gauges the distance from vehicles in front and warns drivers when it senses an impending collision. Also possible is a car that administers a sobriety test. To start the car, a driver breathes into an analyzer. If he or she has had too much, the car won't start.

You can't buy a robot yet that will cook your meals and do your laundry, but computer technology already does many other things in the home.

General Electric (GE) and Mitsubishi are touting microprocessor-based systems that turn lights on and off, activate appliances and adjust thermostats. GE's HomeMinder operates through a master control that attaches to any TV. Electrical gear and lights are connected with special outlets.

HomeMinder preheats ovens and turns on coffee pots on orders placed through a Touch-Tone phone. It also acts as an answering service. Attached to an intruder alarm, the system will flash all the lights in the house in a burglary. Basic price: $500.

Mitsubishi's Housekeeping System, due out in late 1986 for about $2,500, has sensors to detect excessive heat, gas leaks and trespassers. Its Picturephone Sentry video system utilizes invisible near-infrared radiation to record images in the dark at a range of up to 20 meters. The camera can photograph anyone who comes to the door and print out a picture instantly.

Businesses are convinced of the market for automated houses. Ryan Homes is adding HomeMinder to blueprints for 8,000 houses. Yankee Group, a research firm, estimates that 10 percent of U.S. households would buy a "smart home." These technology-advanced families may want to be the first on their block to enjoy high-tech services at any cost.

After years of hype, artificial intelligence is poised to take off. Computers are getting so fast, so well programed and so inclusive in their storehouses of data that they can play chess at close to master strength and can troubleshoot glitches in a car engine with more success than a good mechanic.

Expert systems, the most successful of AI applications so far, often are sold in the form of empty "shells"-software programs that can be filled with specific kinds of expertise needed by a user. Examples: Police in Seattle are using an expert system to crack a serial-murder case. Oil companies use Prospector, electronic-geology software, to locate new reserves on Alaska's North Slope.

Medicine is another beneficiary of expert systems. A program called Mycin can diagnose certain infectious diseases better than human specialists. Doctors at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City are working with Cornell University engineers to develop a way to design better surgical implants with computer programs.

Artificial intelligence has its share of detractors-and its limits. "A computer is still no more than a mechanized idiot savant," says Hubert Dreyfus, professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. "It can't do simple things like apply common sense, deal with analogies or even understand the simple bedtime stories of a 4-year-old."

True humanlike intelligence remains elusive. Beau Sheil, manager of product development at Xerox's AI lab in Palo Alto, California, doesn't believe that a software disc will ever replace a secretary. That job requires at least a little knowledge about an enormous number of topics. "But for specific needs like income-tax counseling or personal financial consulting," he About the Authors: Stanley N. Wellborn is a senior editor for the U.S. News & World Report. Manuel Schiffres is an associate editor.

adds, "artificial intelligence software will be dynamite."

Supercomputers are designed for speed and born to run. By squeezing circuits into ever smaller spaces, such machines minimize the "speed-of-light problem" that limits many computers: The time it takes electric impulses to travel from one part of the machine to the other. In normal use, supercomputers operate at blinding speeds 24 hours¡a day.

"A supercomputer is called a number cruncher because it simulates complex ideas with mathematics that would take thousands of man-hours if individuals had to do the work," says Tom Crotty of the Gartner Group, a Connecticut marketdata firm.

The Cray-2, made by Cray Research, is the most powerful computer yet developed. It completes a computational cycle every 4.1 nanoseconds-the amount of time it takes light to travel 1.5 meters. Its speed of 100 megaflops is 100,000 times faster than the best personal computer. "Nothing comes close to a Cray for sheer brute force," says Larry Smarr, head of the supercomputing project at the University of Illinois.

Now, other scientists are challenging big supercomputer makers with smaller designs that may perform as fast as a Cray but for a lot less money. These minisupercomputers use a design architecture called parallel processing to obtain faster performance. Taking the neural connections in the human brain as their model, parallel processors get ultrafast performance by interweaving thousands of microprocessors. Such devices process gargantuan amounts of material simultaneously, rather than at the one-at-a-time pace of conventional computers.

The most advanced of these is the Connection Machine, being designed and built by Thinking Machines in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A prototype will be used with artificialintelligence programs to develop an unmanned attack vehicle, battle-management plans and a control system for jet cockpits that responds to the pilot's spoken commands.

If scientists could combine all the recent advances in supercomputing and machine intelligence, the result would be a device that humans would be as comfortable with as an old friend. Easier-to-use computers are a paramount dream of Nicholas Negroponte, who directs the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "The electronics of everyday life have become a puzzling, mixed blessing for households and offices and military establishments as well," he says. "You can communicate more meaningfully with a pet animal than you can with today's best computers."

But science is getting closer. Electronic sensors now recognize voice commands, enhance mechanical vision and respond in spoken language. Coming generations of computer software can be run using commands in plain English. Spinoffs will mean more "hands off" interaction with computers in cars, homes and offices. Ralph Gomory, IBM's director of research, envisions that a scientist will be able to point to symbolic objects on a computer screen, "and by pointing to them and moving them, find out their trajectories, rather than be forced to explicitly write down all the formulas of motion."

Among other innovations to watch: â&#x20AC;˘ A system that rapidly recognizes hand- and machinewritten characters-such as signatures on a check-is being tested in Providence, Rhode Island, by Nestor, Inc. It has an accuracy rate of better than 99 percent and "learns" new data by itself, without a need for human programing. â&#x20AC;˘ Within a year, robots markedly similar to the R2 D2 of

the movie Star Wars, will patrol corridors of U.S. prisons. The robot, built by Denning Mobile Robotics of Woburn, Massachusetts, navigates using ultrasonic sensors and infrared tracking beacons.

It detects fires and unusual sounds or movements and reports them to a human guard. Cost: $64,000. â&#x20AC;˘ Several companies have working models of devices that recognize spoken words and then reproduce the written text.

IBM's machine can understand more than 5,000 words-soon 20,000-and even decides when to write "they're" rather than "their." Several American and Japanese companies are at work on "talkwriters" that also give instant translations into other languages. â&#x20AC;˘ At MIT's Media Laboratory, headway is being made on computers that recognize human gestures, read lips, track eye

movements and understand speech.

A prototype was so responsive, says one user, "it was like dealing with a friendly, slightly deaf butler."

Such developments are "close to being available to anyone who wants them," says Charles Lecht, who runs a New York City consulting firm. Adds Jack Kuehler, head of development and manufacturing at IBM: "We're just at the beginning. The technology is running like crazy. If we're smart enough to know how to package it and use it, opportunities are unlimited."

Expectations have been raised before by computer proponents but seldom with such confidence. As technology crosses its newest frontiers-and computers acquire the sensibilities of their human users-the grandiose claims sound less like exaggeration and more like prophecy.

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Personal computers (PCs) once were ballyhooed as indispensable. For many people they were not. But it's too soon for skeptics to laugh-a new beginning for personal computers seems at hand.

Coming to the American market soon is a new generation of PC products that could inject life into the industry. On the way are improv~d sound and graphics features, programs that do not require extensive training, devices that allow computers to control home utilities and appliances, and better educational products.

Stirring the most interest is the powerful Amiga, which Commodore International expects to sell at a base price of $1,295. It has stunning animation and graphics capacity-over 4,000 colors-and replicates the sound of an orchestra across four audio channels.

Whether there are millions of armchair artists, designers and music arrangers eager for these bells and whistles is an open question. But Amiga does represent another step toward making computers easy and convenient to use.

Apple Computer's Macintosh popularized such features as the "mouse"-a hand-held pointing device used to make commands-and screens within screens, or "windows," that display more than one application at a time. Amiga shares these features, while also being able to perform more than one job simultaneously, such as writing and printing.

Having a computer that is easy to use will be crucial in . businesses as PCs begin appearing on desks of less sophisticated users. International Business Machines now sells Top View, a program that permits windows on the screen and allows people to switch quickly from one application to another.

These features are of little value if the applications themselves are so difficult that only determined people can master them. The solution is the introduction of software that incorporates artificial intelligence to make computers respond to commands in plain English. For example, NaturalLink, made by Texas Instruments, lets users get stock prices by simply asking: "What's the current quote for ... ?"

Jerrold Kaplan, chief technologist for Lotus Development, foresees programs that read electronic messages and set priorities on them. To Kaplan, the limit of what AI can do is "our imagination-not the power of our machines."

While PCs have proved popular in businesses, the home market is still largely untapped, because people have not found enough uses for them. That could change.

A promising development for home computers, called the CD-ROM, for compact-disc read-only memory, resembles audio compact-disc players. Using the same technology, it stores vast amounts of text-up to 100 million words, or 220,000 pages-on a disc that can be searched by a computer for desired titles, words or sets of words.

Grolier will sell a disc containing its 9-million-word Academic American Encyclopedia for $199, one-third the price of its printed version. Atari plans to sell a disc drive to read CD-ROM data for $500. Next could be CD-ROMs that show graphics and play music-perhaps a demonstration of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to go with his biography.

PCs could find a place in the home as control devices. One company, CyberLynx, sells a package called Smarthome that lets IBM or Apple computers switch on lights or alarms at specific times-such as when a small child passes a sensor while leaving a play area. The package can turn on lawn sprinklers, or summon fire engines if detectors sense smoke. The computer is used to run the system .

Better teaching tools are in the offing, too. Apple is at work on a classroom network that links a PC on the teacher's desk to those being used by as many as 32 pupils. As for educational programs that are often little more than electronic flashcards, help has arrived. In Robot Odyssey I, a game sold by Learning Company, players design robots that help them escape from a futuristic underground city. Purpose: To improve skills in logic.

All these changes are in answer to pleas for machines and programs to make PCs useful for ordinary Americans. Says Bill Machrone, editor of PC magazine, "There are going to be more and more compelling reasons for people to start using PCs." 0

A'

Friend ofthe Mysore ZOO T,,, It is easy to romantIclze about Sally Walker's life. Ten years ago she came from North Carolina in the United States to study yoga in Mysore, a quaint old city in Karnataka. Sally did study yoga. But somewhere along the way, she lost her heart to seven little tiger cubs that lived in the Mysore Zoo. And so she just stayed on in Mysore to build her dreams around all the animals in the zoo (those tiger cubs were always to remain her favorites), working for them, writing about them and sometimes just standing on her rooftop and pleading to whoever would listen that out there in the zoo were animals waiting to be loved.

Some people think Sally Walker is the best thing to have happened to Mysore Zoo. But that part should have come at the end of our story. And we haven't even begun. So let's go back to October 12, 1944, in Savannah, Georgia, when to Mr. and Mrs. Norman C. Raulston a baby girl was born.

That was Sally. Little Sally wasn't an interesting child. She had a dreadful complex, was overweight and introverted. She spent most of her time, unhappily, in her room with a book and a pet dog or cat.

Then Sally grew up, went to college and studied political science. She also helped with college election campaigns and was elected the vice-chairperson of the State Young Republican Party in North Carolina.

After college, she led an all-black labor union and taught ghetto children. Now

Suddenly the animals of the Mysore Zoo have a lot of friends-thanks to a young woman from America.

by RUGMANI

MENON

looking back, Sally says, "I had an inclination for the underdogs." Despite a full-time job in an office at the University of North Carolina and her other activities with the underprivileged, Sally continued to have difficulty adjusting to life around her. She sought refuge in drugs and alcohol-and ended up with more problems. For three years, starting from the time she was about 23 years old, Sally lived in and out of sanatoriums, studied with self-help groups and struggled through a broken marriage.

During that period, she became interested in transcendental meditation (TM) and yoga. In 1976, Sally set off for Mysore, where her yoga guru, K. Pattabhi Joyce, lived.

For the next few years she studied yoga, and Sanskrit and traveled a little. Then one day, a vet friend took her to the local zoo to see a new litter of tiger cubs. Sally had never liked zoos, considering them cruel places where animals were locked up in cages for man's amusement. But fascinated by that first visit to the Mysore Zoo, "I went back the next day, alone," recalls Sally. "Since the vet had introduced me, the keeper thought I was special and put the cubs in my arms. This. had such an impact on me that ever since I have wanted to do nothing else but be with them. So you see," she smiles, "I was captured by some tiger cubs."

Even then, Sally's opinion of zoos had not changed. "I just wanted to be with those tiger cubs-it was as plainly selfish as that."

Top: Sally Walker feeds two tiger cubs that she reared at home after they were rejected by their mother. Above: Sally at the inauguration of the zoo adoption program-corporations were urged to adopt an animal by paying itsfood bill.

And to do that she conjured up a research project on the impression different kinds of people could make on tiger cubs. While the keepers felt they had to make the cubs afraid to control them, Sally wanted to prove that the cubs would respond, as easily, to kindness. C.D. Krishna Gowda, executive director of the Mysore Zoo, gave his approval to the project and Sally began making her daily calls on the cubs.

Sally would also visit the zoo library and talk to visitors and officials about zoos and zoo management. Slowly, an exciting, beautiful world of animals unraveled itself.

Recalls Sally, "I discovered that if enclo-

sures are constructed properly-if animals grown to 100 hectares and was a splendidly designed garden created around the lairs of have privacy from people, good surroundthe animals living there. ings and companionship-captivity is not cruelty. In fact, it has many advantages. I Sally also learned that while the state then lost my negative attitude toward zoos." and central governments were doing their Suddenly Sally had a new goal. Yoga best to upgrade the zoo, there was one area and TM had served their purpose. They had that they were having problems withpulled her out of her confusion. Now, she public participation. In India, a zoo is just a had more important things to do. On top of place for a picnic and for recreation. The her list was a "massive publicity campaign to animals are a source only of amusement and arouse little academic interest or sympathy. bring zoos into public awareness."

The first thing she did was learn all that The average visitor's curiosity is satiated she could about the Mysore Zoo. Sally after a perfunctory glance at the animals in discovered that it was founded in 1892 by Sri the cages, without a second thought to the Chamaraja Wodeyar, one of the enlight- wider functions of the zoo in terms of ened rulers of the old Mysore state. Since it wildlife conservation and environment was carved out of four hectares on the vast study. There are no privately-run zoological areas surrounding the grand Mysore Palace, societies to supplement the resources proit was called the Palace Zoo, but in 1909, it vided by the government and there are no was rechristened the Sri Chamaraja associations of animal lovers to educate the Wodeyar Zoo. In 1947, it came under the public about the other functions of the zoo. management of the department of parks and But Sally knew where to begin. In gardens. In 1972, the zoo was transferred to December 1982, with the blessings of the the forest department. But finally, in 1979 Zoo Authority of Karnataka, she started a the state government formed the Zoo Au- . society of animal lovers called the Friends of thority of Karnataka as an autonomous the Mysore Zoo (FMZ), modeled on the institution with a separate identity and Friends of the National Zoo in Washington, character. By that time the Mysore Zoo had D.C. Says its charter: "FMZ is a society of people whose desire is to share their knowledge, experience and interest in animal and plant biology with others while focusing their interest on the Mysore Zoo." The society's justification for supporting the practice of keeping wildlife in captivity is twofold: To educate the public about wildlife preservation, and to provide a safe environment for the purpose of breeding endangered species.

The society began its activities simply, by announcing a tiger-cub naming competition.

Says Sally, "The contest was a great hit. We received lots of letters in Kannada and English suggesting fantastic names for our cubs." The results of the contest were published in the society's first-ever issue of the Gnu's Letter, a monthly with columns like "What's Gnu at the Mysore Zoo?" and "How many of you gnu there's a [name of an animal] at the Mysore Zoo?" and reviews of books and articles on wildlife contributed by the society's increasing members.

Above: On Sally Walker's worktable at her home are cutout paper animals which she uses as teaching aids during her zoo-sessions in schools. Right: Sally at a lecture and slide show on nature for teachers.

Far right: Sally and her pet cat.

Sally's pet tiger cubs soon learned the food routine and eagerly followed her to the refrigerator as meal time neared.

Before long, Sally recruited a bunch of enthusiastic young volunteers and formed a zoo patrol to prevent vandalism, indiscriminate feeding of animals and teasing in the zoo. She met executives of industrial houses and philanthropists to arrange sponsorships for different animals.

She wrote to zoological societies abroad asking for vital information on zoo management, animal breeding and rearing, exchanges, and wildlife education. She created office space in her little home at Saraswathipuram. Whatever she did, she did with dedication and zeal.

And then help came-from wildlife enthusiasts; with sponsorships from individuals and industrialists and with some funds and lots of information from, among others, the Chicago Area Zoos, the International Primates Protection League, the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the American Zoo Keepers' Association, the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust.

But perhaps the biggest tribute to her efforts has been the large doses of money that she has managed to get for the zoo animals from the Government of Karnataka.

Once her publicity campaign to bring help began to payoff, the educational program was started.

Since Sally could not get children to the zoo, she took the zoo out to the childrenin zoo mobiles. Every week, she and a group of trusted volunteers would visit various schools with a jeep-load of small animals and a slide projector. Naturally, the children were delighted. Sally began making cut -out toy animals for children while telling them to look for old tires, rubber balls and sacks that animals could safely play with.

Come Wildlife Week and it was film shows, more slide shows and lectures, this time within the zoo premises. The children began looking forward to the "zoo lady."

While she taught children about animals, Sally told their teachers about concepts, ideas and answers to questions like: Why should you visit the zoo? How does the zoo help wildlife preservation? Do animals really maintain nature's ecological balance?

In the midst of all this there was administrative work to be done-trips to Delhi, meetings with officials from various government departments, detailing new projects to improve the zoo, arranging animal exchanges for breeding. Recognition from the capital came when, in 1984, Sally was appointed special invitee to the advisory board of the National Zoological Park, New Delhi.

Sally has changed. Physically, for she now sports a pretty diamond nose ring and her speech alternates between an American drawl and a typical phrase or word in Indian slang (ghadbhad instead of confusion); and psychologically, for she now has a dream and the courage to make it come true.

She draws no salary or honorarium from the society. "I wouldn't do that because I want to establish that this kind of a thing has to be done voluntarily, for only then will the zoo benefit by it." She earns a little money writing on wildlife for various publications, but mostly she survives on the money that her parents in North Carolina send her.

Her goals are now set and her new plans are slowly taking form in a new organization, called the Zoo Outreach Organisation (ZOO), through which she hopes to form societies like FMZ in every town or city in India with a zoo of its own. Work has already begun-letters dispatched, information and more funds sought, people met, volunteers enrolled-to give a better life to Sally's friends: the parakeet, the chimpanzee, the rat-deer. .. and, of course, little tiger cubs.

0 About the Author: Rugmani Menon is a Bangalorebased free-lance fournalist.

Above and below: Visitors at the Animals of India exhibition at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D. C. Right: Indian sloth bear.

Photographs by BARRY FITZGERALD

Indian Animals in Washington As part of its multifaceted celebration of the Festival of India, the Smithsonian Institution also focused attention on the Indian animals in its National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., recently. The zoo, started in 1889, has 3,000 animals representing about 375 species. One of its glorious moments came in 1960 when the first blue-eyed white tiger was received from India; visitors stood in front of its cage all day to watch it. The Indian animals exhibition saw them flocking tb a superb collection-ranging from pond turtles to, of course, tigers-placed in spacious enclosures approximating their natural habitat.

FESTIVAL OF INDIA

A

MANY-SPLENDORED EXTRAVAGANZA The Festival of India in America, which enters its second year this month, continues to fascinate and captivate Americans allover the United States. On these pages, SPAN offers a glimpse of the multidimensional celebration.

Missoula, Montana, chose India's Independence DayAugust 15-to launch its onemonth celebration of the Festival of India with an exhibition of paintings from the ancient land of Mithila in Bihar.

The paintings are mostly the creations of the Mithila women, who originally made them on the mud walls of their homes. Their favorite themes are religious-a fierce Durga astride her tiger or Krishna with Radha or as a cowherd (above).

One of the most spectacular exhibitions held in the nationwide salute to India, "Kushan Sculpture," which opened November 13 in Cleveland, Ohio, presents rare sculptures of two north Indian regions, Mathura and Gandhara, from the 1st to the 5th century. This is the first time that Mathura art has been presented alongside Gandhara art. The 130-piece exhibit will be shown later this year in New York and Seattle.

Among the many Festival of India events organized by the Asia Society in New York was "Shiva!" on October 26-a day-long celebration to the Hindu god. The program included a slide show, "Shiva, the Erotic-Ascetic and His Women'" a lecture entitled" A Pilgrimage to Shiva: The Face~ of Shiva in the Land of India"; screening of Manifestations of Shiva and a dance recital, "Lord of the Caves," by Lee Brunner (above), who, inspired by his visit to the Elephanta Caves, choreographed it.

"India," the most comprehensive exhibition of Indian art from the 14th to the 19th century, opened September 14 at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The exhibition included 350 art objects of exquisite beauty-paintings, jewels, wall hangings and a 17th-century red-and-gold imperial tent.

The exhibition's preview on September 9 was attended by some of America's most prominent citizens and guests from India. At left, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis chats with visitors from India.

"The Rituals of India," which opened September 4 at the Nikon House Gallery in the Rockefeller Center, New York, is a stunning photographic exhibition. The work of English-born Pepita Noble, the exhibit documents vividly the grandeur and scale of ancient ceremonial and religious rituals still practiced in Kerala.

Noble first visited India in 1970, inspired by the diary of her great-grandfather who had served as an officer in the British Indian Army. She became fascinated with the rich culture of Kerala and, in 1980, decided to settle down in the small town of Trichur.

For one week beginning September 10, some of India's renowned performing artists gave Americans a rare insight into the country's extraordinary artistic heritage at New York's Lincoln~Center. Among them were Bharatanatyam dancer Malavika Sarukkai (left), the Kuchipudi dance-husband-and-wife duo Raja and Radha Reddy and Kathak maestro Birju Maharaj.

Above, Pupul Jayakar, chairperson of the Indian Committee of the Festival of India, plants a tree at the Center Plaza in honor of the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to whose memory the Festival is de',. dicated. Helping her are Zubin Mehta, conductor of the New York Philharmonic; and S. Dillon Ripley, chairperson of the Festival's American Committee.

The Great Hall of the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., was the venue, June 13 through September 28, of a fascinating exhibition, "Discovering India."

Made up of more than 150 objects from the Library's own collection, the exhibit traced the West's interest in and interaction with India from ancient times to the present.

Included in the show were letters written by Thomas Jefferson discussing political news and scholarly publications about India; a lavishly

illustrated manuscript, written in Persian in the early 19th century, depicting ethnic and occupational groups in India; and lantern slides of an expedition to the Himalayas by President Theodore Roosevelt's sons, Theodore, Jr., and Kermit, early this century.

Among other rare objects were documents that illustrate the continuing adoption, and adaptation, of Indian fabric designs, games, yoga techniques and music into the mainstream of American culture over the years.

III

I suppose the moment I realized how bad this was getting came during an appointment with my doctor.

I had signed in with the receptionist in the outer office; I was there for a routine checkup. A few minutes later I was led to one of the examining rooms. The nurse told me to remove my shirt and trousers, and said that the doctor would be in to see me in a few minutes.

The nurse closed the door. I was in there alone-just me, the scale, and the glass jar of tongue depressors.

I flipped my briefcase up onto the examining table, centering it on the sanitary paper strip that ran lengthwise. I opened the briefcase. I removed my telephone from its cradle inside the briefcase. I dialed a number.

Standing there in my underwear and socks, I talked to the person I had called. I hung up. I dialed another number and did a quick interview. I hung up. I called my newspaper office to check for messages. I hung up. I placed a long-distance call to my editor at Esquire in New York. I hung up.

Normally by this time I would be staring at my watch, silently steaming and wondering when the doctor was going to get to me. On this day, though, I had no such concern. I may have been a little chilly, dressed the way I was, and I was glad that the people I was calling could not see me. But the passing time was not a worry to me.

I guess I did not hear the knock on the door, because when the doctor turned the knob and walked in, I was in the middle of an animated conversation. My phone was to my ear; the cord snaked back into the briefcase. I was gesturing to make a point.

My shirt and pants were draped over the back of a chair. I must have been quite a sight.

The doctor said nothing. He looked at me. He looked at my telephone. He looked at the cord that led into the briefcase. He pursed his lips. His expression said it all: This man is sick.

This all started when I wrote a newspaper column about a phenomenon I called, for want of a better phrase, "The Twitching of America."

The Twitching of America was epitomized by businesspeople who insisted that all of their important correspondence be delivered by overnight express mail; who would not think of leaving the house without a beeper attached to their belts; who asked their waiters if they could pay their restaurant checks immediately after they ordered so they would not be detained at the end of the meal.

The Twitching of America was symptomatic of a society that had become convinced that time was so precious that not a moment must be allowed to be squandered. You've punched the elevator button and five seconds have passed and the elevator car still has not arrived? Punch it again, look at your watch, and start searching for the nearest staircase. The traffic light ahead has turned green, but the car in front of you is still stopped? Feel your blood pressure rise, your face redden, and your heart quicken.

The two most symbolic artifacts of The Twitching of America were the car telephone and, even newer, the airplane telephone. Two places where people had previously been unreachable were now available for twitching.

c: r::

But even more astonishing, I wrote, were rumors I had been hearing about a new product: a briefcase telephone. It was totally self-contained; you carried it with you and either placed or received calls through a phone unit that was built into the briefcase. You could be reached anywhere.

In the newspaper column I said that the imminent advent of the briefcase telephone was surely the beginning of the end; we were all doomed. The Twitching of America was irreversible.

Soon enough I heard from Susan Mitchell.

Susan Mitchell was a national account manager for a company called Americom, which specialized in the marketing of mobile telephones. She said that she considered my feelings about briefcase phones to be shortsighted and narrow-minded.

She said she wanted to make me a deal. She would lend me a briefcase telephone for a week. She wouldn't bug me at all about it. At the end of the week she would ask if I still thought that The Twitching of America was such a terrible thing.

So it was that Susan Mitchell showed up at my office on a Saturday afternoon and handed me a handsome leather briefcase, inside of which was a working telephone.

The first lesson you learn while carrying a briefcase telephone is that, in the initial 48 hours, it is virtually impossible t6 call anyone without announcing where you're calling from.

"Hi," you say. "Hi," they say. "I'm calling from my briefcase," you say This is fine the first time you say it to people. But when you start to repeat it, they become bored and even annoyed. To you, it's great that you're calling from your briefcase. To them, it ceases to be interesting. They're still answering in their office or in their kitchen, and they couldn't care less where you're calling from.

I was in the backseat of a cab and I decided that I wanted to talk with a friend named Paul Galloway. I had called him three times from my briefcase already.

My briefcase balanced on my lap, I dialed the number.

"Paul," I said, "I am calling you from my briefcase. I am riding in a cab, and I am calling you from my briefcase."

"That's nice, Bob," he said.

"If you don't believe me, I'll let you talk to the cabdriver," I said.

"That's not necessary, Bob," he said ..

"No," I said, "I insist."

I handed the telephone over the front seat to the driver.

"Hello?" the driver said. "Hello?"

The driver handed the phone back to me.

"Your friend hung up," he said.

And indeed he had.

I was walking down a busy street with a woman named Laura Kavesh, who is a reporter at the newspaper where I work. A worried expression came onto her face.

"I knew I forgot something," she said. "I was supposed to call Jeff Zaslow."

"Hey, no problem,," I said. I flipped open the briefcase and handed her the phone. "Give him a call."

She punched the numbers. She reached her friend. Ever chivalrous, I carried the briefcase while she held the receiver to

"Paul," I said, "I am riding in a cab, and I am calling you from my briefcase." her ear and talked. We walked along the boulevard, the phone cord between us, she chattering away, I looking straight forward as if nothing unusual were going on.

"Is that what I think it is?" a man said, an incredulous expression on his face.

"What? You don't have one?" I said.

Getting that kind of reaction was satisfying enough. But the real thrill came after I had left my briefcase phone's number at my office and said that it was okay to call me on that number at any time.

I was strolling down the street again. Pedestrian traffic was heavy. All of a sudden my briefcase started to ring.

Casually I flipped the latches and pulled the phone out.

"Greene," I said into the receiver.

Onward I walked, trying my best to look oblivious.

The main drawback to my briefcase telephone was that it was heavy-very heavy. It weighed approximately 11 kilograms; its battery was contained right in the briefcase. Also, the battery and all of the phone's electronic components took up virtually all of the interior of the briefcase, so that if a person wanted to carry business papers with him, he would have to carry a second (real) briefcase.

As I was staggering down the street with my two briefcases, it occurred to me that for this really to make sense, a person should have another person to carry his briefcase telephone for him. But who would ever have someone to do that?

And then I realized: The President of the United States would have someone to do that. That's the only person we instinctively knew always had a telephone within arm's reach.

We always assumed that one of the nearby Secret Service agentswas holding a case that contained a telephone-designed by some supersecret government agency so that the President could always be in instant touch with anyone in the world.

That's the trouble with rampaging technology. Now all of us can have the same toy the President has. But we can't find anyone to carry it for us.

During dinner at a restaurant one night, the essential

dilemma of the briefcase phone came to me.

I was waiting for my food to arrive. Almost out of habit I lifted my briefcase up to the surface of the table, opened it, and pulled out the phone. When you have a briefcase phone and there is an empty moment, you fill that moment with a call.

I phoned my newspaper office. The editor who answered said he was glad that I had called; there was a slight problem with my next day's column, and now they could have me fix things up. He asked me where I could be reached, and I gave him the number of my briefcase.

So all during the meal he called me and I called him. I would be biting into my sandwich and my briefcase would ring. I would get an idea and I would grab the phone and punch the numbers. By the end of the meal we had things in order, but something occurred to me: What would have happened if I hadn't called the office in the first place?

Obviously the paper still would have come out the next day; obviously whatever glitches had appeared in the column would have been smoothed over. I have been doing my job for years without the benefit of a briefcase telephone, and one day always seems to turn into the next. All of the urgency I was feeling during my dinner wouldn't have been there if I hadn't called the office in the first place. And I wouldn't have called the office if I hadn't been carrying my briefcase phone.

Now that the country is so completely wired that anyone can be reached anyplace, we may be laboring under the delusion that we are so important to other people that we must never be out of touch-not even for a few minutes. That's what the series of dinner phone calls was about. It seems to me that, in the not-too-distant future, the really big shots are not going to be the people who can be reached anywhere, anytime; the really big shots are going to be the people who can't be reached at all. It will be the ultimate mark of status not to be able to be found.

One week after Susan Mitchell lent me the briefcase phone, I headed for the office. As I waited on the street for a cab I opened the briefcase and made a call; as I rode in the cab to work I made another call. This was becoming second nature.

Susan Mitchell had made an appointment to pick up the phone, and she showed up right on time. She was very businesslike; she did not give me a hard sell on whether I wanted to buy it or not-she just asked me how I had liked it, and I said that it had been interesting.

Now she is gone. I am without my briefcase phone. I just walked down the street and realized there was someone I needed to talk to; I automatically reached down by my side before I realized that the phone wasn't there anymore.

I have a feeling that this is going to keep happening for a few days, but I'll get over it. The only way to defeat this syndrome is to go cold turkey; if I tell myself that I will never again carry a briefcase phone, then I won't even think about the possibility. I believe I have had quite enough. In the words of a great country and Western philosopher: If the phone don't ring, you'll know it's me.

0

DemQcracv America

by V.S.

MANIAM

A century and a half ago, in 1835, a book was published in France by a 29-year-old author who was almost totally unknown. It was his first major work.

The book was an instant success, evoking high praise from the cognoscenti in his own country and, when published in English, from some of the greatest thinkers in England and America as well.

There were more translations into other European languages, each running to several printings. The French version was published in 13 editions. The book is still read, and revered, while most other works of the time have passed into limbo.

It was a sociological study of American society and politics in the early 1830s, entitled De la Democratie en Amerique or, in its English version, Democracy in America. Its author, Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville, was a

junior magistrate at Versailles. He had written the book after a nine-month tour, in 1831-32, of what he and his peers called the first new nation, the United States of America.

The penetrating work, whose second part appeared in 1840, won Tocqueville extraordinary acclaim. He was honored with membership of the prestigious French Academy and, a short while later, entered politics and became, for a brief period, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, he soon withdrew from public life and devoted himself entirely to writing. He died in 1859 at age 54. By then, Tocqueville's reputation had been established as, perhaps, the shrewdest political observer of his time. Mainly responsible for that reputation was his classic study of democracy in action.

A quietly mighty book on a mighty

theme, it remains, as one editor of the work noted, "an enduring source of insight and inspiration for each new generation in search of the fundamental criteria of and conditions for economic, social and political democracy."

France had been in almost continuous turmoil since the 18th century, with effort after determined effort made to get rid of the country's old regime of absolute monarchs supported by a coterie of favorseeking noblemen, ambitious ministers and almost servile churchmen. Indeed, that was the predicament of much of Europe at the time. In 1830, when Tocqueville was in the prime of his youth, the turmoil in France reached yet another peak with the fall of the Bourbon dynasty. A "citizen-king" was chosen to lead the country and was given a new constitution that enfranchised citizens owning

property, made the king's ministers responsible as much to the people as to the king and guaranteed a generally liberal regime with freedom of the press as one of its tenets. Within a decade, however, the people became disenchanted as the king grew increasingly severe. Finally, in 1848, he was deposed.

A France and Europe struggling to achieve a new order to replace the ancient regime was thus the backdrop against which Tocqueville came to write his book. The seemingly perpetual unrest in his country had the young man's mind questing for an enduring sociopolitical stability, one that would be acceptable to his and many of his contemporaries' liberal thinking. When the new monarchy came into being in 1830, he was far from happy about it. And, together with a close friend and fellow-magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont, he decided to make a long trip to America to learn and write about democracy in action. "We are leaving," he wrote to a friend on the eve of his voyage, "with the intention of examining in detail and as scientifically as possible all the mechanisms of this vast American society about which everyone talks and no one knows." The two friends wangled from the government a long leave of absence, as well as a commission to examine and report on the innovative prison system in America. That study was onlya pretext for their principal purpose.

In May 1831, the two young magistrates landed in America. When, nine months later, they sailed back for France, they had visited much of the United States, completing to their satisfaction their study of democracy as a working principle of society and of government.

Less than two months after their return, Beaumont refused to argue a case that was not to his liking and, as a consequence, was relieved of his magistracy. In sympathy and protest, Tocqueville also resigned his job. Both set about writing the books they had planned on America.

Beaumont wrote an allegorical novel on race relations in that country, while Tocqueville produced Democracy in America, published in January 1835.

That it was addressed to the detractors of the democratic system and to its more enthusiastic protagonists in his country was made clear by him in a letter to a friend a month after the book's publication.

"I wished to show what a democratic people really was in our day," he wrote,

"and by a rigorously accurate picture to produce a double effect on the men of my day. To those who have fancied an ideal democracy, a brilliant and easily realized dream, I endeavored to show that ... such a government cannot be maintained without certain conditions of intelligence, of private morality and of religious belief that we, as a nation, have not reached and that we must labor to attain before grasping their political results."

To those for whom the very word democracy was abhorrent, Tocqueville added: "I have tried to show that, under a democratic government, the fortunes and the rights of society may be respected, liberty preserved and religion honored; that though a republic may develop less than other governments some of the noblest powers of the human mind, it yet has a nobility of its own; and that after all it may be God's will to spread a moderate amount of happiness over all men, instead of heaping a large sum upon a few by allowing only a small minority to approach perfection. I attempted to prove to them that whatever their opinions might be ... society was tending everydaymore and more toward equality ... that the question had ceased to be whether they would have an aristocracy or democracy."

Tocqueville's avowed objective, as he stated in a long introduction to the book, was to accelerate the developing democratic movement in what was then known as the Christian world. "The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to the advantage of democracy: all men have aided it by their exertions, both those who have intentionally labored in its cause and those who have served it unwittingly; those who have fought for it and even those who have declared themselves its opponents have all been driven along in the same direction, have all labored to one end; some unknowingly and some despite themselves. " Would it, then, be wise, he asked, to imagine that a social movement of that nature could be checked? Could it be believed that the democracy that had overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings would retreat or stop "now that it has grown so strong and its adversaries so weak?"

Tocqueville added in that introduction: "If the men of our time should be convinced, by attentive observation and sincere reflection, that the gradual and

progressive development of social equality is at once the past and the future of their history, this discovery alone would confer upon the change the sacred character of a divine decree. To attempt to check democracy would be in that case to resist the will of God ....

"The Christian nations of our day seem to me to present a most alarming spectacle; the movement which impels them is already so strong that it cannot be stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided. Their fate is still in their own hands; but very soon they may lose control."

In other words, his book was the product of a deep, sincere and enlightened concern over the future of his countrymen as well as those in the rest of Europe. "God destines a calmer and a more certain future to the countries of Europe," he noted at one point in that introduction.

He made one other point. He had examined American democracy "to find instruction by which we may ourselves profit." Also, his effort was by no means to write a panegyric. "Such was not my design; nor has it been my object to advocate any form of government in particular, for I am of the opinion that absolute perfection is rarely to be found in any system of laws. I have not even pretended to judge whether the social revolution, which I believe to be irresistible, is advantageous or prejudicial to mankind. I have acknowledged this revolution as a fact already accomplished, or on the eve of accomplishment; and I have selected the nation from among those which have undergone it, in which its development has been the most peaceful and the most complete ... I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear, to hope from its progress."

The present-day reader of TocquevilIe's book would do well to plunge straightway into it, without fâ&#x201A;Ź~adingthe introduction, much less the enormous body of literature that the book has spawned. For then the reader would be able to savor fully the infinite splendors of this classic. After having read it, he might then read the introduction and the books on this work to understand better its immediate setting, the author's objective in writing it, and the impact it has had

.

on political thought in the century and a laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote conhalf since its publication. sequences. If there is a country in the Tocqueville's book is also an absorbing history of America from even before the world where the doctrine of the emigration from Europe. "America is the sovereignty of the people can be fairly only country in which it has been possible appreciated, where it can be studied in its to witness the natural and tranquil growth application to the affairs of society, and of society, and where the influence exer- where its dangers and advantages may cised on the future condition of States by be judged, that country is assuredly their origin is clearly distinguishable."

America ....

"The people reign in the American His eye for the colorful detail asserts itself even in the chronicling of the early political world as the Deity does in the history of the nation. He mentions, for universe. They are the cause and the aim instance, how the rock in New England of all things: everything comes from where the first Pilgrims landed had be- them, and everything is absorbed in come an object of veneration. "I have them."

Tocqueville begins with the organizaseen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of the Union." Having tion of the township in New England as a noted that fact, he soars from the stone to first step toward studying the county, the what really is the crux of the theme of his state and, finally, the Union. For, masterly work: "Here is a stone which the township independence, as he observes, feet of a few poor fugitives pressed for an "is the life and mainspring of American instant, and this stone becomes famous; it liberty at the present day."

With a wealth of closely observed is treasured by a great nation, a fragment is prized as a relic. But what has become detail, Tocqueville, who is first and foreof the doorsteps of a thousand palaces? most a superb descriptive reporter and Who troubles himself about them?" only then a social analyst, reports com-.

Thus from the origin of what he calls prehensively on the judiciary, the press the Anglo-Americans, Tocqueville glides and the political system-reiterating that the development of the United States effortlessly into a study of the country's social and political organization, the prin- "was the result of a mature and reflecting ciples inspiring them, the laws that preference for freedom, and not of a .gradually grew to embody those princi- vague or ill-defined craving for independence." ples and the officials who were authorized Punctuating the book are quick, terse, to enforce those laws. At one point, in the early part of his work, he states, gemlike summations that have the readunobtrusively and almost in passing, "In er pondering for long afterward. One Connecticut, the electoral body con- instance: "To the European, a public sisted, from its origin, of the whole officer represents a superior force; to number of citizens; and this is readily to an American he represents a right." be understood. In this young community Another: "The only nations which deny there was an almost perfect equality of the utility of provincial liberties are those fortune, and a still greater uniformity of which have fewest of them; in other opinions." He adds to that a quick words, only those censure the institution footnote: "In 1641 the General Assembly who do not know it." A third instance: "The political parties that I style great. .. of Rhode Island unanimously declared that the government of the State was a are usually distinguished by nobler feademocracy and that the power was vested tures, more generous passions, more in the body of free citizens, who alone genuine convictions, and a more bold and had the right to make the laws and to open conduct than the others .... Minor watch their execution." Before the reader parties, on the other hand, are generally realizes it, Tocqueville is launched upon deficient in political good faith .... They the grand theme of his work: the study of are not sustained or dignified by lofty purposes .... They glow with a factitious democracy.

And he re-emphasizes, a little later, zeal; their language is vehement, but why precisely he has chosen the New their conduct is timid and irresolute."

In the second and supplementary part World for his study. "In America the of his work, published five years after the principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as it is . first, Tocqueville goes on to make a philosophical examination of social, ecowith some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by the nomic and political change on the basis of

his study of America, drawing conclusions that are often arrestingly accurate, sometimes a little too large, but always fascinating. One sample: "Among a democratic people where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or has worked, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural and honest condition of human existence .... This serves to explain the opinions that the Americans entertain with respect to different callings. In America no one is degraded because he works, for everyone about him works also; nor is anyone humiliated by the notion of receiving pay."

Throughout his work, Tocqueville had the French and European aristocracy of that time in mind as he made those observations in a chapter which he titled "Why Among the Americans All Honest Callings are Considered Honorable."

Tocqueville closes his' book with what is an exhortation and a warning: "The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness."

In what was probably the most perceptive contemporary review of Democracy in America, the great political thinker and leader of English liberalism, John Stuart Mill (1806-73), with whom Tocqueville came very soon to be ranked, wrote that the latter had set the example of analyzing democracy. Tocqueville's work, he said, "has at once taken its rank among the most remarkable productions of our time, and is a book with which, both for its facts and its speculations, all who would understand, or who are called upon to exercise influence over their age, are bound to be familiar: it will contribute to give to the political speculations of our time a new character." It is 'a book, he also wrote, "the essential doctrines of which it is not likely that any future speculations will subvert, to whatever degree they may modify them."

Mill was right. Tocqueville's luminous work remains perhaps the most reliable guide to what he himself had urged as "a new science of politics .. .for a new world."

0 About the Author: V.S. Maniam is a special representative afThe Statesman in New Delhi.

An Unknown Indian Discovers an Unknown American Most people shed their dreams and their ber a lovely day spent with Marie Seton, the sense of wonder early. There are some who film critic, whom Ramachander had condo not. This is the story of two such tacted; I had felt we were intruding, but I people-an unknown Indian teacher and think she enjoyed it as much as we did. film critic, and an unknown, unrecognized The last few years, living in Delhi, and American artist. The unknown Indian was out of touch with Ramachander, I'd grieved Akumal Ramachander, who has great a bit-thinking how, like so many young dreams for himself and others, and the Indians, his dreams would slowly be extinÂĽ guished, teaching English at the Agricultural energy to make them come true.

The unknown American was Harold Harold Shapinsky (left) with University in Bangalore. I should have Shapinsky, an artist of Russian origin, who Akumal Ramachander known better. Akumal makes things happen had been painting for 40 years in New York, in obscurity and for himself and others. He combines a gambler's instinct, and a poverty. He is a contemporary of Jackson Pollock, Mark certain measure of shrewdness, with an essential faith in people Rothko and Willem de Kooning, who were the first Americans and their talents. These were the qualities that led him to to paint in the abstract expressionist genre initiated by the discover-and get others to recognize-the art of Harold Russian Kandinsky in the early 20th century. Shapinsky had a Shapinsky. Only an innocent would have dared to challenge the scholarship'" at Robert Motherwell's famous school, "The money changers in the temples of the art world, a ruthless world Subjects of the Artist," and was selected by Motherwell for a where an artist as retiring as Shapinsky could not survive unless "New Talent" show in 1950. He participated in a couple of he conformed to the rules and played the game right. group exhibitions in the early 1950s, and had been praised by What could possibly have led Akumal Ramachander from The New York Times; apparently de Kooning had also thought his teaching job in Bangalore to the door of the Shapinskys in highly of his work. However, Shapinsky dropped out of the New York City? Ramachander met Shapinsky in the strangest commercial art race, and continued painting, true only to his way. You could call it pure chance, but there is such a thing as own inner vision-which perhaps was richer and purer for not magnetic attraction, and people can be pulled to, or move beingsubjected to the pressures of commercialism, or currently toward, what they most desire and believe in. In 1984, fashionable preoccupations.

Ramachander was invited to lecture on Indian culture and I first met Akumal about 15 years ago; it was the opening politics at Kansas State University. Stopping off at Chicago, he day of the new session at Central College, Bangalore. I had found (by one of those strange coincidences that we cannot rejoined university life, after a gap, to rediscover the wonders explain-and so' describe as destiny) that his host had not ofliterature. Suddenly there was this breathlessly excited young turned up to meet him. So he called poet A.K. Ramanujam and man standing near me. "I just heard you're a poet," he said, his wife Molly (whom he knew), and went there instead. They "and I am editing Upsurge. I'd like you to give me some poems, asked him to accompany them to a party being given by an and also write a review of the Hindi cinema." So I did. And that Indologist friend. wasthe beginning of a lively, warm friendship-which, in spite At this party, as Ramachander talked about Indian art, and of a 7-year gap, has lasted over these 15 years. And that's why, about a Polish surrealist artist, some of whose graphics he had in June last year, when I happened to open a newspaper and taken to London and sold, a young man listened intently. see a story about Ramachander's sensational discovery of an Several days later, the young man, David Shapinsky, happened unknown painter, I was thrilled, but not unbelieving; if anyone to meet Ramachander again-and this time told him about his could have done it, it would have to be Ramachander, I artist father whose life, he said, was a failure: he remained thought. Even as a student he had a wide range of interests~ unknown, and none of his work had been sold. The father, short stories, politics, music, poetry, cinema, the arts. Sling-bag however, had never stopped painting-on thick bits of paper on shoulder, he would turn up, excited, angry or thrilled about and cardboard, some of it even picked up from the streets some happening, and over endless cups of tea there would be because he could not afford canvas. David showed Akumal endless talk. slides of his father's work, and Akumal was excited by the He gave me a coPy of Engels' book on the family, which Renaissance quality of the forms and colors. Characteristically, didn't, at the time, mean much-but looking back, definitely he was deeply moved by this story of a struggling, unspoiled affected my whole concept of the family and woman's place in artist, with no gift for selling himself or his work. Always a bit it. He introduced me to the tremendous poetry of Russia's of a Don Quixote, ready to tilt at injustice, Akumal borrowed Anna Akhmatova, for which I shall be eternally grateful. He money and went to New York. was always reaching out to strangers, following new ideas, There he found Harold and Kate Shapinsky living in a breaking down barriers, meeting famous people. I can remem- cramped apartment, with hardly enough space for the artist's

AN UNKNOWN INDIAN ... continued

" The h¡Istory

of Abstract Expressionist painting will .have to be rewritten. "

Above:

Oil on paper, 1955.

Facing page: Harold Sha pInsky. .

work or for the quilts and sweaters that Kate had been making all these years to support her beloved husband and his work.

Kate was a contemporary of Martha Graham, but had given up dancing to help her husband. She always believed in his genius, and thought his work superb. Totally unworldly, where others chased the material rewards of an affluent society, they cherished each other, and their shared creative life.

Ramachander was profoundly moved by the innate grace, tenderness and dignity so apparent in the Shapinskys' world.

The glowing, brilliant colors of the artist's work took Ramachander back to a childhood memory, which now surfaced breathtakingly. It was a memory of chasing butterflies in a small field near his home: "I would spend quite a long time there, chasing butterflies, hundreds of thousands of them, in all their brilliant hues. I would never destroy a butterfly, just chase them, and wonder at that great profusion of colors. And I think all that color sank into me-all those permutations and combinations. They were already there in me."

At his own expense, and convinced of Shapinsky's extraordinary quality, Ramachander called in an Indian photographer friend who had settled in New York, Sudhir Vaikattil, to make about 50 slides of the paintings. Armed with these transparencies, he decided to break down the high walls of the New York art establishment. At least 30 galleries flatly stated they were not interested enough to have a look. He got through to Dean Anderson of the Smithsonian, who was struck by the transparency of the work, but was too cautious to commit himself definitively.

Borrowing more money, Ramachander flew to Europe to continue his assault on the art world. He got his important break when Ronald Alley, keeper of the modern collection at London's Tate Gallery, agreed to look at the slides, and admitted he was immensely impressed. Much later (when he had seen the actual work), Alley wrote to Ramachander congratulating him on his discovery. "Color slides can be very misleading," he said, "and I had expected to find lyrical work with glowing colors. Instead, his pictures turn out to be much more thickly painted-definitely paintings rather than drawings -and above all, much tougher and more dramatic. One senses a real drama and tension, even anguish, behind the works, which, though small, are very highly charged."

Ronald Alley put Ramachander in touch with James Mayor of the prestigious Mayor Gallery in London. Mayor's father had first exhibited Picasso, and Mayor himself had shown Motherwell, Lichtenstein and Warhol. Mayor immediately recognized the merit of Shapinsky's work, flew to New York and arranged a Shapinsky retrospective in London, part of a Festival of American Art to be held at the Mayor Gallery, happily coinciding with the artist's 60th biFthday-May 21, 1985.

Twenty-two works were exhibited, all sold at prices ranging from £12,000 to £30,000 each. There was no doubt about it.

Shapinsky had arrived-thanks to his 40 years of patient, though unrewarded devotion to his art. And, of course, thanks as well to the efforts of the indefatigable Ramachander.

The reviews were mostly excellent. John Russel Taylor of The Times referred to Shapinsky's "extraordinary interior energy, so that one does begin to wonder if, as in the paintings of Arshile Gorky, there is some overlaid representational base known only to the painter-funnily enough, one is convinced of their power primarily because./ they can still impress while

evidently swimming right against the stream of our presently fashionable preoccupations."

Dutch television invited Ramachander for a feature, and important museums in Cologne and Amsterdam expressed their eagerness to exhibit Shapinsky's work.

New Yorker magazine considered this an important enough discovery to have its senior features editor, Laurence Weschler, write a long piece on the story.

Meanwhile, Farrukh Dhondy, the multicultural commissioning editor of BBC's Channel 4, together with writers Tariq Ali and Salman Rushdie (the novelist whom Ramachander characteristically had introduced himself to, and become friends with, while Rushdie was on a visit to India several years ago) had heard the story. They decided to make a film about this remarkable discovery of a First World artist by a Third World impresario, quite an astonishing reversal of the usual procedure. Channel 4 re-created the entire story by flying a team to New York and to Bangalore; Salman Rushdie narrated the modern fairy story. Rushdie also wrote about it in the Sunday Observer saying that "the history of Abstract Expressionist painting will have t6 be rewritten." The art critic of the Guardian, Waldemar Januszizak, was not impressed, however, and accused Rushdie and Tariq Ali of using the "art of hype" to promote work which was "unoriginal, nostalgic, small, intense, occasionally charming, sometimes beautifuL ... " Anyway, Shapin sky had now "arrived" -and nothing succeeds like success! Ramachander told me that a slick young art dealer in a silver Rolls-Royce approached him, offering to buy Shapinsky's work unseen for £100,000 per picture, which would have been about £2.5 million. Ramachander was wary of the offer, thinking the dealer would probably hoard the work, and release it one at a time, so that finally, a single work might fetch as much as had been given for the lot. He advised a "no deal."

For the Shapinskys it was, literally, an overnight international success, and a new life. Kate and Harold made plans to move to the countryside. Radiating a quiet inner happiness, all Shapinsky could do was to hug his wife and his benefactor Akumal, saying, "It's marvelous." He only wanted to paint, and that is all he wants for the future. But now he will have more space on the large canvases he had always dreamed of; they will now be available and his work will be seen. And the Shapinskys, who had lived lovingly and happily in poverty, will continue to live happily ever after.

Ramachander's life too has been incredibly changed. He can, from the modest percentage that will come to him from the sales ot Shapinsky's work, give up his uninspiring teaching job.

He can travel, meet interesting people, write books and help a great many of those he loves and believes in. This time in Delhi, over the same countless cups of tea, Ramachander told me he planned to form a group in Bangalore to help artists and writers. He doesn't want to leave the city he loves, nor does he want to change anything in his lifestyle. But the bastions of the commercial art world-a regular Goliath-have been breached by a young David from India, with only one stone in his sling-his gut-level faith in himself and in an unknown artist. 0 (More pictures of paintings on inside back cover and back cover.)

About the Author: Anna Sujatha Mathai has published two collections of poetry: Crucifixions and We The Unreconciled. Her poems have been translated into Swedish, Danish, Romanian and Dutch.

The Return of Washington A histori<; portrait of George Washington is part of the 18thcentury saga of Indo-American relations. Presented by Yankee traders to a Calcutta businessman in 1801 for his pioneering role in opening India to American trade, it found its way back to the United States-till American Ambassador to India John Gunther Dean arranged for it to come "home."

To the Edge of the Univers~ A Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer says that the coming of Halley's comet is just one exhilarating diversion for a world that is entering the golden age of astronomy. Armed with powerful new tools of discovery, scientists are poised to look close to the edge of the universe and answer questions that have long seemed unanswerable, says John Noble Wilford.

First Person Singular Reviewing an anthology of essays by North American writers on their craft, Nayantara Sahgal comments on the literary techniques and beliefs of writers like (left to right from top) John Updike, Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrienne Rich, E.L. Doctorow and Anne Tyler.

Making the Familiar Strange What would it be like for people to dance with their hands and play instruments with their feet? What would it be like, in other words, for the familiar to become strange and the strange familiar? Several American centers of learning are teaching students to think visually, to free the eyes and Ihind from stereotypes and taboos- and come up with new ways of doing things.

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~O) .~

~ Oil on paper, 1949, 55.8 em

x 44.5 em.

Interior by Harold Shapinsky.

Oil and enamel on paper, 61em x 45 em.